Billions of suns shimmer in the Night, – and all the gods are silent and shine.
The Night, – the immense abyss sucks it up, breathes this dark shroud of blood, this veil of shadow.
A voice cries out in the dark: « O Abyss, you are the only God. »i
Another voice answers, in an ironic echo: « O unique God, you are Abyss! »
All the suns that I know overflow with shadows, are full of enigmas, pierce the night with irruptions, with intestinal fury, pulverize and volatilize the mysteries.
Their deliriums, their burns, their glimmers, their impulses, fill old divine voids, long already there, pierce black matter, streak with dark mists.
See the divine Athena, wise, simple, sure, solar too, – one comes from afar to pray under the radiance of her aegis, and to recollect (relegere) on the threshold of her altar, on her calm Acropolis.
But her very Soul is only shadow, even if her Intelligence is light.
It is said that the dreams of the wise, the hatreds of the people, the tears, the loves and the gods pass.
I prefer to believe that they slide eternally, into nameless oblivion, an endless drift, but no, they will not pass. On the contrary, they grow, and always multiply. Like God Himself.
This God whom, out of faith or fear, fierce monotheists say they want to « unify » (in words only). They vehemently assign to Him a single attribute, the « one », only the « one », – not the « two », or the « three », or the « π », the pleroma or the infinite.
Those who pronounce His plural, intangible name, Elohim, still read in this plural the « One », the unique, alone, singular « One ».
They also assign the defined article to His name: the Elohim. הָאֱלֹהִים. Ha-Elohimii.
« The » God. In Arabic, too : « Al » Lah. « The » Divinity.
Two grammatical temptations : to ‘unify’ God (as being ‘one’)… and to ‘define’ God (by the article)….
And death is promised, surely, to all others, to those who, they say, « multiply Him, » – in word or thought, by action or omission….
A crucified Muslim, a saint and martyr, at the beginning of the 10th century A.D., famously said:
He paid with his life for this deep and uncomfortable truth.
Is the God, immensely infinite, so much in need of this din around a ‘unity’ that is tired, but certainly threatened, atomized with clamor (of pride and conquest), crumbled with cries (of hatred and suffering), diluted with harangues (of excommunications and fatwas).
The « One », – image, or even idol, of pure abstraction, worshipping itself, in its solitude.
The. One. The One.
The definite and the indefinite, united in a common embrace, against grammar, logic and meaning, – for if He is « One », if He is only « One », how can one say « the » One, who supposes « an » Other, maybe a less or a more than « one » Other, lurking in His shadow?
Only, perhaps, is the path of negative theology worthwhile here.
Maybe, God is neither one, nor multiple, nor the One, nor the Other, nor defined, nor undefined, but all of that at once.
Only one thing seems to be sure: He is nothing of what they say He is. Nada.
How is it possible to attribute an attribute to Him, if He is unity as such? What blindness! What derision! What pride!
They don’t know what they are doing. They don’t know what they are saying. They don’t think what they think.
But if He is not the One, from a grammatical and ontological viewpoint, what sort of grammar and ontolgy can we use to say what He really is ?
The very idea of the One is not high enough, not wide enough, not deep enough, – for His Présence, His Powers, and His infinite armies (tsebaoth) of shadows, to remain included in it.
To move forward, let’s reflect on the concept of ‘reflection’.
The sun, this unique star (for us), by its infinite images, by its incessant rays, is ‘reflected’ in the slightest of the shadows. Some of these rays even dance within us, with in our souls.
The Veda tradition helps to understand the lesson, adding another perspective.
The God Surya, who is called ‘Sun’, says the Veda, has a face of extreme brilliance, – so extreme that his ‘wife’, the Goddess Saranyu, flees before him because she can no longer face his face.
To keep her escape secret, to hide her absence, she creates a shadow, – a faithful copy of herself – named Chāyā, which she leaves behind, in her place.iv
It should be noted that in Sanskrit Chāyā, छाया, indeed means ‘shadow’. The root of this word is chād, छाद्, ‘to cover, to wrap; to hide, to keep secret’.
The word chāyā is also given by Chantraine’s Dictionary of Greek Etymology as having « a definite kinship » with the Greek word σκιά skia, ‘shadow’, ‘darkness, hidden place’ and also ‘ghost’ (a qualifier designating man’s weakness). Avestic and Persian also have a very similar word, sāya, ‘shadow’. The word skia is found in the Gospel several times, for example:
« This people, sitting in darkness, saw a great light. And upon those who sat in the region and the shadow (skia) of death, the light has risen. »v
The God Surya is deceived by this faithful shadow, which seems to be (in appearance) His own shadow. He, then, unites Himself to her, to Chāyā, to this shadow that is not divine, only human. And He generates with her à son, Manu.vi
Manu, – the ancestor of mankind.
Manu, – the Adam of the Veda, therefore!
According to Genesis, a text that appeared at least a millennium after the hymns of Ṛg Veda were composed (and thus having, one can think, some distance from the most ancient Vedic intuitions), the God (named Elohim) famouslysaid:
נַעֲשֶׂה אָדָם בְּצַלְמּ כִּדְמוּתֵנוּ
Na’oçéh adam bi-tsalme-nou ki-dimoute-nou
« Let us make Adam in our image (bi-tsalmé-nou) and according to our likeness (ki-demouté-nou)« vii.
Then the text insists, and repeats the word ‘image’ twice more.
Vé-bara Elohim et-ha-adam bi-tsalmou, bi-tsélém Elohim bara otou.
Translated literally: « And Elohim created Adam in his image (bi-tsalmou), in the image (bi-tslem) Elohim created him. »viii
Let us note that the third time, this ‘image’ that Elohim uses to create is not the image of anyone, it is only an ‘image’ with which He creates Adam. Perhaps it is not even an image, then, but only a shadow?
This is worth thinking about.
The Hebrew word צֶלֶם tselem, ‘image’, has the primary meaning: ‘shadows, darkness’, as the verse « Yes, man walks in darkness (be-tselem) » (Ps. 39:7) testifies, and as the word צֵל tsel, meaning ‘shadow’, confirms.
The Vedic God generates « Manu », the Man, with the Shade, Chāyā.
The biblical God creates « Adam » as a « shadow ».
Was there an influence of the Vedic myth on the biblical myth of the creation of man? One cannot say. On the other hand, it is obvious that some fundamental archetypes remain, beyond time and cultures, which are properly human, undoubtedly coming from the dark depths, where many shadows indeed reign.
It is not so surprising, in fact, that one of the deepest archetypes attaches precisely the idea of shadow to the deepest nature of man.
Man, a frail shadow, – and image too, or veil, of an abyss within him, without bottom.
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iErnest Renan. Memories of childhood and youth. Prayer on the Acropolis. Calmann-Lévy, Paris, 1883, p.72
iiSee Gen 6.2; Ex 1, 17: Ex 20.16; 1Kings 17.18; Job 1.6 and many other examples.
iiiHallâj. The Book of the Word. Translation by Chawki Abdelamir and Philippe Delarbre. Ed. du Rocher, 1996. p.58
ivDoniger, Wendy(1998). « Saranyu/Samjna ». In John Stratton Hawley, Donna Marie Wulff (ed.). Devī: goddesses of India. Motilal Banarsidas. pp. 158-60.
In a previous article, The Dreamers’ Paradise, we invited you to meditate on the double nature of the plant, which is rooted below, or in the stomach, for the materialists, or on the contrary above, in the philosophy of the Veda. In both cases, the plant and its roots sum up their respective visions of the world.
Hylozoismi, which is not very Vedic but intrinsically modern, sees life as « springing » from matter itself, which is still a metaphor. The « source » can be seen to be, in a way, analogous to the « root ». In everything, always and everywhere, life supposes the immanent presence of the same internal and autonomous principle of generation, source or root, which animates all things.
No less modern, and rather more so, materialism, is by definition eminently immanent. It denies a priori any idea of soul in life, and it kills (in the bud) any idea of spirit within matter. Its aim is to assimilate, to digest in the material stomach any idea of the spirit, or of its essence, which amounts to the same thing.
Kant, on the other hand, is not at all modern. He asserts that an immaterial world exists. This immensely vast world includes all created intelligences, reasonable beings, but also the sentient consciousnesses (of all animals), and finally all the principles of life, whatever they may be, and which are found everywhere in nature, for example in plants.
Among the « created intelligences » some are related to matter. We know this, because we experience it in ourselves, and it is they who, through this special alliance, form « persons ».
Other « created intelligences » are not bound to matter. They may remain isolated, or they may be linked to other spirits, or they may be more or less closely associated with other entities, having an intermediate status between matter and spirit.
All these immaterial natures (the intelligences, the consciousnesses, the principles) exert their (immaterial) influence in the corporeal world, according to ways and means which remain incomprehensible.
Among them, there are all the so-called « reasonable » beings, whether they are present on earth or lying, presumably, elsewhere in the universe. Because of the use of their reason, whose end it is, they are not destined to remain separate (from matter). Reason is another name for an immanent, ordering and regulating principle, which reasonable beings (i.e. beings in which reason is immanent) use to animate the (irrational) fabric of matter, and constitute it as a « living » entity.
We can suppose that the so-called reasonable beings maintain with the other created intelligences various exchanges or communications, in accordance with their respective natures.
These communications are then not limited by bodies, nor by the usual constraints of material life. They transcend them. Nor do they weaken with distance in space or time, nor do they disappear when death occurs.
According to these general views, the human soul, which is a particular case of these immaterial and reasonable natures, should therefore be regarded as already linked, in the present life, to both worlds, the immaterial and the corporeal.
The singular soul is bound to a particular body, which makes it an absolutely unique person. It clearly perceives the material influence of the corporeal world. As it is also part of the spirit world, it also feels the influences of the immaterial natures, and can perceive, in certain cases, their immaterial effluvia.
At death, as soon as the bodily connection has ceased, the soul continues to be in impalpable community with the spiritual natures.
Undoubtedly, it should then, being at last separated from the body, be better able to form a clearer intuition of its own nature, and to reveal it, in an appropriate manner, to its inner consciousness.ii
On the other hand, it is probable that the other spiritual natures, those which are not « incarnate », cannot be immediately conscious of any sensible impression of the bodily world, because they are not bound in any way to matter.
Not having a body of their own, they cannot be conscious of the material universe or perceive it, lacking the necessary organs. But they can exert a subtle influence on the souls of men, because they have a nature similar to their own.
The two can even maintain a reciprocal and real trade, capable of progress and enrichment.
However, the images and representations formed by spirits that still depend on the corporeal world cannot be communicated to beings that are purely spiritual.
Conversely, the conceptions and notions of the latter, which are intuitive representations corresponding to the immaterial universe, cannot pass as such into the clear consciousness of man.
Let us add that the ideas and representations of purely spiritual beings and of human spirits are undoubtedly not of the same kind, and are therefore very difficult to transmit and to share as such, without having been digested first.iii
Among the ideas or representations which can set the human mind radically in motion, stimulate in it an acute desire for metamorphosis, and begin its transformation into a « new man », the most powerful ones can appear to it quite unheard of, inexplicable, perfectly capable even of « submerging » or « drowning » it.
Where do they come from?
From an immaterial world, that of the Muses, these inspirers reputed to come to the rescue of creators and disarmed spirits?
As phenomena, they also seem to be able to emerge spontaneously from the deepest interior of man himself.
The most elevated of them have a priori no connection with the personal utility or with the immediate, practical, individual needs of the men who receive them.
But perhaps they have some use for distant, theoretical, universal needs, which concern the whole universe?
They are moreover capable of transporting themselves again, leaving the sphere of consciousness assigned to a particular person, by a kind of contagion, of contamination, extending outwards, far beyond what one can imagine.
They go far, touching in the passage of their noumenal and numinous power other reasonable beings that they affect in their turn.
There are thus two types of spiritual forces, some centripetal, where self-interest absolutely dominates, and others, centrifugal, which reveal themselves when the soul is somehow pushed out of itself and attracted to others.iv
The lines of force and influence that our minds are capable of receiving or conceiving do not, therefore, simply converge in each of us, to be confined to them.
There are also forces that can move powerfully outside of us, outside of our own intimate space, and sometimes in spite of us, – to reach other people, other minds.
And even caress the confines.
From this, we deduce that irresistible impulses can carry the strong man away from self-interest, even to the ultimate sacrifice.
The strong law of justice, and the somewhat less imperious law of generosity and benevolence, which do not fail to show themselves universally in human nature, can carry one or the other, according to the circumstances, and according to the specific tessitura of such or such spirits, conditioned by their deep aspirations, suddenly revealed.
It is thus that in the apparently most intimate motives, we find ourselves depending in fact on universal laws, of which we are not even a little conscious.
But the result is also, in the world of all thinking natures, the possibility of a general unity and communion obeying all spiritual laws, and by this effect, preparing new degrees of metamorphosis.
Newton called ‘gravitation’ the tendency of all material bodies to come together. He treated this gravitation as a real effect of a universal activity of matter, to which he gave the name of « attraction ».
In a similar way, one could imagine the phenomenon of thoughts and ideas getting into thinking natures, then revealing themselves to be sharable, communicable, as the consequence of a universal force, a form of « attraction » by which spiritual natures influence each other.
We could name this power, the « law of the universal attraction of the consciousnesses ».
Pushing the metaphor, the force of moral feeling could well be then only the dependence felt by the individual will towards the general will, and the consequence of the exchanges of universal actions and reactions, which the immaterial world uses to tend in its way to unity.v
The human soul, in this life, occupies its full place among the spiritual substances of the universe, just as, according to the laws of universal attraction, matter spread over the immensity of space never ceases to be bound by bonds of mutual attraction, and the elementary particles themselves, far from remaining confined to a narrow granularity, fill the whole universe with their quantum potentials of field.
When the links between the soul and the corporeal world are broken by death, it can be assumed that another life in another (spiritual) world would be the natural consequence of the countless links already maintained in this life.
The present and the future would thus be formed as of one piece, and would compose a continuous whole, both in the order of nature and in the order of the spirit.vi
If this is the case with the spiritual world and the role that our spirit plays in it, it is no longer surprising that the universal communion of spirits is an ordinary phenomenon, and far more widespread than is generally admitted.
The extraordinary, in fact, lies much more in the absolute singularity of psychic phenomena affecting such and such a singular, individual person, than in their very existence, which seems to be widespread throughout the universe.
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i Philosophical doctrine which maintains that matter is endowed with life by itself.
iiCf. Kant. Dreams of a man who sees spirits, – explained by dreams of metaphysics. (1766). Translated by J. Tissot. Ed. Ladrange, Paris, 1863, p.21
« Wisdom is separate from everything »i said Heraclitus in his concise style.
For a start, I adopt here the translation of G.S. Kirkii. But the quote in the original Greekiii ,’Sophon esti pantôn kekhorismenon’, preserved in Stobaeus’ Anthology, allows several very significant variations, depending on how one understands the word sophon, – which is, grammatically, an adjective, with the neutral meaning: ‘wise’.
Here are two representative examples of quite alternative translations:
« What is wise is separate from all things. »
« To be wise is to be separated from all things. »
Both these interpretations lose the abstract idea of ‘wisdom’, and personalize the word sophon, in a more concrete way, by attributing it to an entity (‘what is wise’), seen as ‘separated from everything’, and therefore outside this world. Another way to personalize is to attribute it to a (wise) ‘being’, which could possibly belong to this world, therefore not separated, – but whose ‘being wise’ would separate it, somehow virtually.
Clémence Ramnoux, for her part, proposes: « Wise things are separated from everything. »
The spectrum of the meanings of sophon is thus very broad:
Wisdom. That which is wise. The Wise Being. The Wise Thing.
The word sophon has no definite article in this fragment, but it has it in other Heraclite fragments. Then, if one adds the definite article to the adjective sophon, it acquires an abstract meaning, and leads to other interpretations, including the idea of ‘Transcendence’, and even the idea of the ‘One’:
« Let us put the article in front of something wise, by identifying it with the One-Thing-Wise, then the formula touches the goal of knowing… a Transcendence! Let it be heard only in the sense of human wisdom, then the formula says that: for men, the way to be wise consists in keeping oneself separate from all or everything. It would be wise to live away from the crowds and their madness. It would be wise to live apart from the vain science of many things. The two are surely not incompatible. Put together, they would reform the ideal meaning of a vita contemplativa: retreat and meditation of the One. « iv
To justify these interpretations, Clémence Ramnoux studies the other occurrences of the word sophon, in fragments 32, 50 and 41 of Heraclitus.
From these comparisons, she draws the assurance that with sophon, Heraclitus wanted to « designate the divine with the words of fragment 32 », and « if not the divine, even better, Something in dignity to refuse thisvery name. »v
Fragment 32 uses the expression to sophon (‘the Wise One’, or ‘the Wise Being’, which C. Ramnoux renders as ‘the Wise Thing’):
« The Wise Thing (to sophon) alone is one: it wants and does not want to be said with the name of Zeus. »vi
In Greek, one reads : ἓν τὸ σοφὸν μοῦνον λέγεσθαι οὐκ ἐθέλει καὶ ἐθέλει ὄνομα.
Hen to sophon mounon legesthai ouk ethelei kai ethelei Zènos onoma.
By translating word for word: « One, the Wise One, alone, be said: He does not want, and He wants the name of Zeus ».
Ouk émou, alla tou logou akousantas homologein sophon estin hen panta einai.
Word for word: « Not me, but the Logos, listening, saying the same, wise is one, all, being. »
Five words follow each other here: sophon estin hen panta einai. Wise, is, one, all, being. There are many ways to link them.
The most direct way of translating would be, using capital letters for emphasis:
« Wise is One, All, Being ».
The German edition by W. Kranz and the English edition by G.S. Kirk translate :
« Listening, not to me, but to the Logos, it is wise (sophon estin) to agree (homologein)vii: everything is One (hen panta eïnaï). »
In another interpretation, that of H. Gomperz :
« Listening not to me, but to the Logos, it is fair to agree that The One-The Wise One knows everything. »
Clémence Ramnoux suggests yet another interpretation:
« Listening not to me, but to the Logos, agreeing to confess the same lesson (everything is one?) is the Wise Thing. « viii
However, she adds a question mark to the expression ‘everything is one’, which shows indeed that a certain doubt is at work here.
In spite of the significant differences of interpretation that we have just seen, what stands out is the idea that to sophon undeniably possesses a magnified status, and that it can be qualified as ‘unique’ and even, implicitly, ‘divine’.
Fragment 41 reinforces the hypothesis of associating the idea of unity with to sophon:
« The wise thing is one thing (hen to sophon): topossess the meaning (epistasthai gnômèn), by virtue of which everything is led through everything. »
By linking the semantic fields of the four fragments, 32, 41, 50, 108, Ramnoux draws two possible interpretations of the essential message that Heraclitus is supposed to transmit: « A simple meaning would be: Wise Thing is One, and she alone. Another meaning would be: Wise Thingisseparate from everything. « ix
These fragments, put together, carry a vision, aiming to grasp the ‘Wise Thing’, from different angles.
« That one gathers the fragments thus, and one will believe to reconstitute a recitative on the topic of the Wise Thing. Here is what should be recited all together while learning the same lesson! »x
The real difficulty is to avoid reading Heraclitus with much later, anachronistic representations of the world, starting with those of Plato and Aristotle.
In spite of the pitfalls, it is necessary to try to reconstruct the spirit of the philosophical community in the pre-Socratic era, the nature of its research :
« It is permissible to conjecturalize the way of being: it would consist in separating and reuniting. To separate from whom? Probably: the crowd and its bad masters. To reunite with whom? Probably: the best and the master of the best lesson. Separate from what? The vain science of many things. To find what again? The right way of saying things. It’s a two-way street! The Heracletian ethos does not alienate man from the present thing: on the contrary, it makes him better present, and as in conversation or cohabitation with the thing. (…) A master of discourse puts into words the meaning of things (…) But the authentically archaic way of thinking was probably still different. For a good master, (…) it is appropriate that discourse shows itself with an ambiguous face, hidden meanings, and two-way effects. »xi
According to Ramnoux, Heraclitus’ fundamental intention is to teach man « to stand far and near at the same time: close enough to men and things so as not to alienate himself in the present, far enough so as not to be rolled and tossed around in traffic. With the word as a weapon to defend oneself against the fascination of things, and things as a reference to better feel the full of words. Like a being between two, aiming through the crack at something untraceable, whose quest guarantees, without his knowledge, his freedom! « xii
Ambiguity? Darkness ? Double meaning ? Hidden sense ?
No doubt, but for my part I would like to put the spotlight on the only unambiguous word in fragment 108: kekhorismenon, ‘separate’, applying to a mysterious entity, named « Wise », whose attributes are unity, being and totality.
How can one be ‘separated’ if one has ‘unity’, and ‘totality’?
What does the idea of ‘separation’ really imply in a thought that claims to be thinking about the ‘origins’?
It is with these questions in mind that I set out to search for occurrences of the word ‘separate’ in a very different corpus, that of the biblical text.
The idea of ‘being separate’ is rendered in Biblical Hebrew by three verbs with very different connotations: בָּדַל badal, חָלַק ḥalaq, and פָּרַד pharad.
בָּדַל badal is used in two verbal forms, niphal and hiphil.
The niphal form is used with a passive or reflexive nuance:
1° ‘to separate, to move away’: « Separate yourselves from the peoples of the land » (Esdr 10,11).
2° ‘to be separated, distinguished, chosen’: « Aaron was chosen » (1 Chr. 23:13); ‘to be excluded’: « He shall be excluded from the congregation of those who returned from captivity » ( Esdr. 10:8 ).
The hiphil form has a causative, active nuance:
1° ‘To separate, tear off’: « The veil will separate you » (Ex 26:33); « Let it serve as a separation between the waters and the waters » (Gen 1:6).
2° ‘To know, to distinguish, to discern’: « To be able to distinguish between what is impure and what is pure » (Lev 11:47).
3° ‘To separate, choose; exclude’: « I have separated you from the other peoples » (Lev 20:26); « The Lord has chosen the tribe of Levi. « (Deut 10:8); « The Lord has excluded me from his people » (Is 56:3).
In this sense, ‘to separate’ means ‘to choose’, ‘to distinguish’, ‘to discern’, ‘to elect’ (or ‘to exclude’).
חָלַק ḥalaq brings another range of meanings, around the notions of ‘sharing’ and ‘division’:
1° ‘To share, to give, to give’: « They divided the land » (Jos 14:5); ‘To be divided’: « Their hearts are divided, or have separated from God » (Hosea 10:2).
2° ‘To divide and distribute’: « And at even he divided the prey » (Gen 49:27); « And he distributed to all the people » (2 Sam 6:19); ‘To scatter’: « I will divide them in Jacob » (Gen 49:7), « The face of YHVH has scattered them » (Lam 4:16).
As for the verb פָּרַד pharad, it is used in an intensive or reflexive sense.
1° (Niphal) ‘To separate’: « Separate yourself, I pray you, from me » (Gen 13:9), « He who separates himself (from God) seeks his desires » (Prov 18:1).
2° ‘To spread, to be scattered’: « These spread throughout the islands » (Gen 10:5).
3° ‘To separate’ with intensive or causative nuances (piel): « They separated from their wives » (Hosea 4:14), « A people that remains separated among the nations » (East 3:8); (hiphil) « Jacob separated the lambs » (Gen 30:40); and (hithpael): « all my bones were separated » (Ps 22:15).
To sum up, the biblical meanings attached to the verbs whose sense is ‘to separate’ include the following nuances: ‘to distance, choose, exclude’ but also ‘to know, distinguish, discern’, or ‘to share, distribute’, and ‘to be scattered’ or ‘to spread’.
One can quite easily apply all these nuances to an entity that would be (divine) Wisdom.
Wisdom, in fact, distinguishes, discerns, knows; she can be shared, spread, distributed;
she can distance herself, elect or exclude.
But yet, what is the truly original meaning that applies to Wisdom?
In an attempt to answer, I have consulted all the Bible verses that contain the word ‘wisdom’ (ḥokhma). There are several hundred of them.
I have selected those that are most ‘open’ – containing an implicit invitation to further research – and grouped them into four categories:
Wisdom as ‘mystery’ and ‘secret’;
Wisdom as ‘companion of the Creator’;
Wisdom as ‘person to dialogue with’;
and Wisdom as ‘faculty of the mind’.
For example, here are some verses assimilating wisdom (or Wisdom, with a capital letter) to mystery or secrecy:
« If he would reveal to you the secrets of Wisdom » (Job 11:6).
« But Wisdom, where does she come from? « (Job 28,12)
Do not say, « We have found wisdom » (Job 32:13).
« Be silent and I will teach you wisdom » (Job 33:33).
« In secret you teach me wisdom » (Ps 51:8).
« Then I began to reflect on wisdom » (Qo 2:12).
There are also verses in which Wisdom seems to accompany the Creator in his task:
« He made the heavens with wisdom » (Ps 136:6).
« Spirit of wisdom and understanding » (Is 11:2)
« Establish the world by his wisdom » (Jer 10:12).
« It is that you abandoned the Source of Wisdom! « (Bar 3,12)
« YHVH by wisdom founded the earth » (Pr 3:19).
There are also verses where Wisdom is presented as a person, capable of interacting with men:
« Tell wisdom: you are my sister! « (Pr 7,4)
« Wisdom cries out through the streets » (Pr 1,20)
« Doesn’t Wisdom call? « (Pr 8,1)
Finally, there are the verses where wisdom is considered a faculty of the mind:
« Give me now wisdom and knowledge » (2 Chr 1:10).
« Who gives wisdom to the wise » (Dan 2:21).
« Intelligence and wisdom like the wisdom of the gods » (Dan 5:11).
For good measure I add here some verses from biblical texts, which are not recognized by the Masoretes as part of the Canon of the Scriptures of Judaism, but which belong to the texts recognized by Catholicism – in this case the Book of Wisdom and the text of Sirach (Ben Sirach):
« Wisdom is a spirit friendly to men » (Wis 1:6) [Person].
« What Wisdom is and how he was born, I will reveal it; I will not hide the mysteries from you, but I will follow his footsteps from the beginning of his origin, I will bring his knowledge to light, without departing from the truth. « (Wis 6:22) [Mystery, Secret].
« For more than any movement, wisdom is mobile » (Wis 7:24) [Mystery, Secret].
« With you is Wisdom who knows your works » (Wis 9:9) [Companion of the Creator].
« But first of all wisdom was created » (Sir 1:4) [Companion of the Creator].
« The root of wisdom to whom was it revealed? « (Sir 1:6) [Mystery, Secret].
« Wisdom brings up her children » (Sir 4:11) [Person].
And finally, here are some excerpts from the New Testament, – especially from Paul’s texts:
« And Wisdom was justified by all his children » (Luke 7:35) [Companion of the Creator].
« It is of a wisdom of God, mysterious, hidden » (1 Cor 2:7) [Mystery, Secret].
« To give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation » (Eph 1:17) [Faculty of the Spirit].
« All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge » (Col 2:3) [Faculty of Spirit].
« Filled with the Spirit and with wisdom » (Act 6:3) [Faculty of the Spirit].
If we return to the intuition of « separate wisdom » as imagined by Heraclitus, we see that it is perfectly compatible with the representations of Wisdom as belonging to the Mystery, as a Companion of the Creator and as a Person]
But where Judaism plays with the idea of a kind of doubling of the divine between the function of the Creator and the role of Wisdom (which is, let us recall, one of the Sefiroth of theJewish Kabbalah), the metaphysical mysticism of Heraclitus sees only divine Unity and Totality.
It is not the least result of this research, to find in one of the most eminent Greek pre-Socratic thinkers, such an extreme intuition of the transcendence of Wisdom, and of its Unity with the Divine.
Wisdom is par excellence ‘separate’, and is also that which is most ‘one’.…
« Le Grand Cairn de Barnenez. Photo Philippe Quéau »
Le Grand Cairn de Barnenez domine la baie de Morlaix, dans le Finistère.
Composé de moellons de dolérite et de dalles de granite, il a été construit entre 4500 et 3900 ans avant J.-C., soit bien avant les premières Pyramides d’Égypte.
Il mesure 75m de long et 28m de large. C’est le plus grand mausolée d’Europe.
En son sein, onze chambres funéraires.
Certaines de leurs dalles sont gravées.
Des zigzags. Un signe en U. Un ‘arc’. Des triangles isocèles.
Et une figure rectangulaire, — dite ‘à la chevelure rayonnante’.
Cette métaphore, employée par les guides, et qui se veut accrocheuse, est-elle pertinente? Non, presque certainement pas.
Que signifiait donc ce symbole unique, gravé il y a plus de six millénaires?
Ces courbes arquées, dressées vers un ailleurs, les unes d’un côté, au nombre de huit, les autres d’un autre côté, au nombre de six, sortent en souple gerbe de l’arête d’un cadre vide.
Ce ne sont à l’évidence pas des cils, des poils, des cheveux, — ni des blés ou des branches.
Elles ont une beauté simplissime et archétypale, qui évoque pour moi le plein jaillissement de l’esprit, saisi par les puissances chamaniques.
Ce sont les lignes d’un champ d’énergie, neuro-magnétique, ou plutôt neuropsychique. Elles figurent quatorze lianes qui relient, comme par une éruption de sève, un flux de suc, le rectangle désormais vide du corps abandonné par la conscience, et l’infini mystère qui emplit le cairn et l’univers.
Multitudinous angels, created for this purpose, stubbornly remain with the times and beings that already are no more. From the brushing of their wings, sharp like judgments, they make them live, yet in another way. They separate them from what they were not, and from what they could not be. Thus they keep them in their essence, animated by the gentle breath of their wings. By their quiet effervescence, they watch over their infinite sleep, – like the eagle circling above the nest to inspire its eaglets, – like the winds once palpitated in the face of the origins. They are the guardians of the past in agony, warning, for as long as it takes, the fatal coma.
Other angels roam the dark alleys of the future. They spread immense wings like ecstasy, they glide silently over the empty plains of the non-existent. Their powerful flight awakens the black waters, and all that is not yet. Against all odds, from far and wide, crack the shells of unborn times.
With their burning lips they give the beak to the fledglings of the possible.
We must finally evoke the angels of the present. They link (like quantum loops, and subliminal bursts of precognition) the distant past and the improbable future, the countless déjà-vu and the unlimited forthcoming, the immanent causes (dormant like dead saints) and the transcendent potency (radiant like seraphim). They fly and come, as in Jacob’s dream, between the uncertain and the unimaginable…
From these vast landscapes of various angels, which are like myriads of divine synapses, a vesperial mist is exhaled.
It announces in advance the rain to come, penetrating, fertile, and in the rainbow of the sky finally bent, it draps the first rays of dawn, gorged with soul plasma and liquid light.
In matters of religion, one of the common errors is to want to choose with whom one can talk, and to exclude from one’s field of vision extreme ideologues, stubborn minds, closed mentalities. This is human.
It is incomparably easier to begin detailed debates or circumstantial glosses if there is already an a priori agreement on the substance. This avoids infinite misunderstandings and deadlocked dead ends. Who thinks it possible, indeed, to ever agree, on any point whatsoever, with such and such an ultra tendency of such and such a monotheistic religion?
It’s human, and it’s easier, but, on the other hand, the ultras of all acabits, irreconcilably ‘other’, absolutely ‘foreign’ to any dialectic, remain in the landscape. They continue, and for a long time, to be part of the problem to be solved, even if they don’t seem to be part of the solution. Precisely because they have nothing in common with the proponents of the very idea of ‘dialogue’, they can be interesting to observe, and must be, in every respect, if one considers the long-term destiny of a small Humankind, standing on its dewclaws, on the surface of a drop of mud, lost in the cosmic night.
Nevertheless, it is infinitely easier to speak to ‘open’ minds when trying to cross cultural, traditional or religious barriers.
« The conditions of the Christian-Islamic dialogue change completely if the interlocutor is not legal Islam but spiritual Islam, whether it is Sufism or Shî’ite Gnosis. » i
Henry Corbin was an exceptional personality. But he admitted that he did not want to waste his time with the ‘legitarians’. This is understandable. And yet, they are basically the key lock. If world peace and universal understanding are to be achieved, ‘spiritualists’ and ‘legitarians’ must find, whatever the difficulties to be overcome, a common ground…
Dialogue with the ‘other’ begins with mastering the other’s language.
In theory, we should be able to understand all of them, or at least decipher them, particularly these chosen languages, chosen for conveying this or that sacred message.
Sanskrit, for example, should be part of the minimal baggage of any researcher interested in a comparative anthropology of the religious fact through time. It is the oldest and most complex language, which still testifies to the wonders of the human spirit, trying to approach mysteries that are seemingly beyond its reach.
I hasten to add (biblical) Hebrew, which is much simpler, grammatically speaking, but full of a subtle delicacy that can be seen in the play on words, the etymological shifts, the radical drifts, the subliminal evocations, and the breadth of the semantic fields, allowing for the most daring and creative interpretations.
Koranic Arabic is also a necessary acquisition. The Koran is a book with a very ‘literary’ and sophisticated writing that no translation can really render, as it requires immersion in the musicality of classical Arabic, now a dead language. Puns and alliterations abound, as in Hebrew, another Semitic language.
The famous Louis Massignon sought in good faith « how to bring back to a common base the textual study of the two cultures, Arabic and Greco-Latin »ii.
For our part, we would also like to be able to bring the study of Vedic, Egyptian, Sumerian, Assyrian, Zoroastrian and Avestic cultures, at least in theory if not in practice, to a « common base ».
And, still in theory, one should particularly have solid notions of Ancient Egyptian (very useful if one wants to understand the distant foundations of the ancient ‘mosaic’ religion), and Avesta (indispensable to get an idea of the progressive, ‘harmonic’, transitioniii in ancient Iran from Zoroastrianism and Mazdeism to Muslim Shî’ism).
In the absence of these indispensable add-ons, one can minimally rely on a few genius smugglers. Henry Corbin is an incomparable pedagogue of Shî’ite Islam. Who else but him could have allowed the discovery of a concept like the one of Ḥûrqalyâ?
Ḥûrqalyâ is the land of visions, the place where mind and body become one, explains Henry Corbin. « Each one of us, volens nolens, is the author of events in ‘Ḥûrqalyâ‘, whether they abort or bear fruit in its paradise or its hell. We believe we are contemplating the past and the unchanging, as we consume our own future. » iv
His explanation of Ḥûrqalyâ is rather short and somewhat obscure. We would like to know more.
Looking in the famous Kazimirsky dictionaryv, I discovered the meaning of the verbal root حرق (ḥaraqa): « To be burned, to burn. To set on fire, to ignite; to burn with great fire. To burn each other (or to sleep with a woman). To reduce to ashes. »
It is also the word used to designate migrants who ‘burn’ their identity papers.
With different vocalizations of the same verbal root, the semantic spectrum of the resulting nouns widens considerably:
ḥirq « the tallest branch of the male palm tree, which fertilizes the flowers of a female palm tree »;
ḥourq « avarice »;
ḥaraq « fire, flame, burn »;
ḥariq « which loses its hair; which produces violent lightning (cloud); « fire;
ḥourqa « burning heat in the intestines »;
al- ḥâriq « the tooth (of a ferocious beast) »;
ḥâriqa « burning (said to be a very sensual woman in the carnal trade) »;
ḥâroûqa « very sensual woman », or in the plural: »who cuts (swords) »;
ḥirâq « whodestroys, who consumes »; « who burns the path, who runs very fast (horse) »;
ḥourrâq « burning firebrand »;
ḥârraqa « vessel to be set on fire ».
You get the idea…
But in the context that interests us here, it is the noun حَرْقً (ḥarq), used by mystics, that we must highlight. It means « the state of burning », that is, an intermediate state between برق (barq), which is only the « lightning of the manifestations of God », and الطمس فى الذات, al-tams fi-l-dhat, « annihilation in the ‘that’, in the divine essence »vi.
The etymology of the word ḥûrqalyâ, shows that it means a state that lies between the lightning flash and the ash or annihilation .
Let us return to the glossary proposed by Corbin.
« A whole region of Hûrqalyâ is populated, post mortem, byour imperatives and our vows, that is to say, by what makes the very meaning of our acts of understanding as well as our behaviors. As well as all the underlying metaphysics is that of an incessant recurrence of Creation (tajaddod), it is not a metaphysics of the Ens or the Esse, but of the Estovii, of ‘be !’ in the imperative. But the event is put to the imperative only because it is itself the iterative form of the being for which it is promoted to the reality of event. » viii
We learn here that Creation is a continuous act, a continuous iteration, an imperative to be, a ‘be!’ infinitely repeated, implying a ‘become!’ no less perpetual.
Esto! Or the unceasing burning of the moment, that is to say of the presence (to oneself, or in oneself ?).
Perhaps we can read in these ever-changing, ever-challenging moments « the mystery of the primordial Theophany, of the revelation of the divine Being, who can only reveal himself to himself in another self, but can only recognize himself as other, and recognize this other as himself only because he is God in himself. » ix
Another image, often used in the Psalms, is that of clothing. It is necessary to reach this state where the body is no more than a ‘garment’ that one can freely undress or put on, because it is really the other in oneself that is the true garment of oneself.
___________________________
iHenry Corbin. Heavenly earth and resurrection body. From Mazdean Iran to Shî’ite Iran. Ed. The boat of the sun. Buchet/Chastel. 1960. p.12
ii Louis Massignon. Lettres d’humanité tome II, 1943, p.137
iiiAccording to the expression of H. Corbin. op.cit. p. 111
ivHenry Corbin. Heavenly earth and resurrection body. From Mazdean Iran to Shî’ite Iran. Ed. The boat of the sun. Buchet/Chastel. 1960. p.13
vA. de Biberstein Kazimirski. Arab-French dictionary. Volume I. Ed Al Bouraq. Beirut. 2004, pp. 411-412.
vi The mystical meaning of the word tams is precisely the annihilation of the individuality of man’s attributes in the attributes of God. The word dhat means « that » and, in context, the very essence of God.
viiIn Latin: ens = « being », esse = « to be », esto = « Be! »
viiiHenry Corbin. Heavenly earth and resurrection body. From Mazdean Iran to Shî’ite Iran. Ed. The boat of the sun. Buchet/Chastel. 1960. p.16
ixHenry Corbin. Heavenly earth and resurrection body. From Mazdean Iran to Shî’ite Iran. Ed. The boat of the sun. Buchet/Chastel. 1960. p.111
C’est par une citation de William James que le Professeur Stanislas Dehaene commença la Leçon inaugurale qu’il donna au Collège de France, le jeudi 27 avril 2006 :
« ‘La psychologie est la science de la vie mentale.’ Par ces quelques mots, dès 1890, William James, cernait le domaine de ce qui est devenu, aujourd’hui, la psychologie cognitive. »i
Puis il esquissa son propre et ambitieux programme de recherche : « Tenter d’énoncer des lois générales de la pensée », – sans négliger d’en reconnaître aussitôt les limites, quant au cœur même du problème:
« La psychologie cognitive laisse provisoirement de côté deux questions difficiles : le cerveau humain dispose-t-il de ressources suffisantes à sa propre description ? Cette entreprise d’auto-description des lois du cerveau par lui-même n’est-elle pas intrinsèquement limitée, voire contradictoire ou tautologique ? »ii
Selon Dehaene lui-même, la psychologie cognitive a eu tendance dans les dernières décennies à se focaliser sur les détails de quelques phénomènes plus que sur l’architecture générale de la cognition.
Pour corriger ce tropisme dommageable, fort peu prometteur pour l’avenir de la profession, Dehaene suggère de concentrer désormais les efforts sur les sources possibles des « lois générales de la cognition ».
Il y en a trois grandes classes à considérer.
D’abord, il y a les lois physiques, chimiques et biologiques. La pensée découle évidemment de la biologie du cerveau. Dans L’Homme neuronal, Jean-Pierre Changeux a défini le cerveau de l’homme comme « une formidable machine chimique où l’on retrouve les mêmes mécanismes moléculaires à l’œuvre chez la mouche drosophile ou le poisson torpille »iii.
Il nous avait semblé être parti à la recherche de ce qui rend Homo sapiens unique parmi les espèces animales, et voilà qu’on compare sa conscience à celle de la mouche ou du poisson torpille (lequel dégage il est vrai de sacrées secousses électriques et ‘réverbérantes’ !)…
Ensuite, il y a les lois de la psychologie que l’on pourrait qualifier de lois ‘algorithmiques’. Il s’agit là d’une référence au champ entier des sciences de la computation inauguré par les travaux d’Alan Turing et de John von Neumann, puis de Noam Chomsky ou David Marr. Dehaene s’y réfère avec une sorte de gourmandise, et a cette formule, peut-être un peu trop réductrice : « Le cerveau humain, superbe exemple de système de traitement de l’information »…
Selon les théories de la ‘computation’, les ‘lois algorithmiques’ obéissent nécessairement à des contraintes universelles. Elles sont donc valables pour les ordinateurs, les mouches drosophiles et les cerveaux, humains ou non. La psychologie cognitive doit donc s’appuyer sur ce formalisme universel pour tenter d’inférer les algorithmes de la pensée.
Sans doute ‘conscient’ du risque d’une assimilation, peut-être trop rapide et inopportune, des cerveaux humains à de simples puces électroniques, fussent-elles particulièrement ‘performantes’, Dehaene fustige certains de ses collègues, les psychologues fonctionnalistes, qui ont « négligé l’architecture du cerveau. Tout indique que celle-ci ne ressemble en rien à celle d’un ordinateur classique. »iv
Et dans un élan, Dehaene, soudain lyrique, s’enthousiasme : « C’est une étonnante machine comprenant de multiples niveaux d’architecture enchâssés et massivement parallèles. Avec cent mille millions de processeurs, un million de milliards de connections, cette structure reste sans équivalent en informatique, et ce serait une erreur profonde de penser que la métaphore de l’ordinateur puisse s’y appliquer sans modifications. »v
En conséquence, il faut refuser la « dichotomie réductrice » entre le « matériel » biologique, et le « logiciel » de la psychologie du cerveau, dichotomie que Dehaene juge « totalement inadéquate ».
En réalité, tout le corps est associé à l’acte de penser, et tout y ‘conspire’ : « Tous les niveaux d’organisation, depuis la molécule jusqu’aux interactions sociales, conspirent pour déterminer notre fonctionnement mental. Il n’y a donc pas de compartimentation étanche entre biologie et psychologie. »vi
Le fait que ces fort divers niveaux d’organisation soient si étroitement imbriqués chez Homo sapiens explique sans doute que le cerveau et le phénomène de la conscience atteignent des niveaux de complexité sans équivalent.
Mais c’est aussi cette complexité même qui peut inviter à prédire que le cerveau sera capable de se comprendre lui-même, un jour peut-être, quoique cela puisse d’emblée paraître (philosophiquement) paradoxal.
Citant la boutade de Lyall Watson : « Si notre cerveau était simple, nous serions encore trop simples pour le comprendre », Dehaene déclare avec optimisme : « C’est précisément parce que notre cerveau est assez complexe que nous avons une petite chance de le comprendre ! »
Mais, à mon humble avis, on est tout à fait en droit de partir d’une intuition contraire, et de postuler que la conscience est par essence, et par construction, abyssale : plus on tente de plonger en son mystère, plus on découvre son infinie profondeur.
L’avenir tranchera peut-être entre ces deux intuitions opposées.
Qu’il me soit permis cependant d’ouvrir encore une autre piste en évoquant la capacité de la conscience à toujours se dépasser elle-même. C’est peut-être là, précisément, son essence, – se dépasser toujours.
Mais une telle affirmation est de type métaphysique, et sort donc du champ de la psychologie cognitive…
Comme la psychologie cognitive est, à l’évidence, dans l’incapacité d’attaquer directement le problème métaphysique de l’existence de la conscience, et plus encore celui de l’essence de chacune des consciences singulières dont chaque être humain dispose en propre, elle préfère s’adonner à des recherches beaucoup plus étroites, plus ciblées.
Il semble par exemple plus facile aux psychologues de la cognition de se focaliser sur certains concepts, certes abstraits, mais qui se prêtent à des protocoles expérimentaux bien concrets, tels que celui de nombre.
Le nourrisson lui-même n’a-t-il pas vraisemblablement une sorte de proto-intuition du 1 (sa bouche s’unissant au sein), ou du 2 (les yeux de sa mère) ?
En tout état de cause, formuler des hypothèses sur la manière dont on prend conscience des premiers nombres naturels dès l’âge le plus tendre, semble a priori plus aisé que d’investiguer la présence effective ou putative d’archétypes universels, tant dans la conscience individuelle que dans l’inconscient dit ‘collectif’.
Il n’est sans doute pas très commode non plus pour le psychologue cognitif de se mettre dans son laboratoire en quête de consciences ‘altérées’ ou ‘magnifiées’ sous l’influence du numineux, lors de cérémonies sacrées, de transes chamaniques ou à la suite d’expériences mystiques, pouvant aller, si l’on en croit l’histoire des religions, jusqu’à la vision prophétique, ou même jusqu’à la métamorphose ultime de la conscience par sa fusion dans le sein de la divinité même…
Il semble plus facile de se concentrer sur un problème bien balisé, permettant des expériences ‘cognitives’ aisément duplicables, comme autour du concept de ‘nombre’.
D’autant que ce concept semble suffisamment universel pour être aussi accessible à la ‘conscience’ de nombreuses espèces animales, ce qui offre un intérêt pratique évidentvii.
De nombreuses d’expériences ont montré que l’estimation, la comparaison, et le calcul de quantités numériques sont à la portée, non seulement de primates non humains, mais également des rongeurs, des oiseaux, des dauphins, et de certains reptiles. S. Dehaene en tire une leçon de portée générale.
« Ainsi, l’intuition approximative du nombre, mais aussi des autres grandes catégories kantiennes que sont l’espace et le temps, est répandue dans le monde animal, sans doute parce qu’elle est essentielle à la survie – pas une espèce qui n’ait besoin d’évaluer les sources et les quantités de nourriture ou, dans le cas des espèces sociales, le nombre et la qualité de ses alliés ou de ses ennemis. »viii
Il va de soi de ramener la conscience du nombre chez l’homme au niveau de la conscience (supposée) du nombre chez l’animal, du primate ou du rongeur, au motif que ce concept de nombre est essentiel à sa survie.
Cette assimilation de la conscience humaine et de la conscience animale, ne serait-ce que partielle, soulève plusieurs objections.
Alors même que la psychologie cognitive n’a pas seulement commencé de pénétrer le mystère de la conscience humaine, qui pourtant nous est naturellement accessible, dans une certaine mesure, par introspection, comment pourrait-elle sérieusement envisager de pénétrer la conscience d’espèces animales différentes de l’Homme, comme celle du Gorille, du singe Paresseux ou du Rat des villes ?
D’un autre côté, l’existence (même hypothétique) d’archétypes collectifs, et d’idées universellement répandues à propos du numineux et du sacré, tend à faire penser que ces concepts de niveau élevé sont peut-être, d’une certaine façon, tout aussi « essentiels à la survie », darwinienne et à long terme, d’Homo Sapiens, quoique d’un autre point de vue.
La psychologie et l’anthropologie cognitives se targuent de pouvoir dégager, par-delà la variabilité des langues et des cultures, des structures mentales universelles. Parmi ces structures universelles, celles liées au nombre semblent en apparence plus immédiatement accessibles que, par exemple, celles liées au numineux ou au sentiment du sacré.
L’intérêt des psychologues cognitifs pour les expérimentations faites à partir des nombres naturels se justifie sans doute par la facilité avec laquelle on peut créer des protocoles expérimentaux riches de résultats (quantitatifs).
Mais, pour montrer aussi clairement que possible l’abîme conceptuel et méthodologique entre un psychologue cognitif comme S. Dehaene et un psychologue des profondeurs comme C.G. Jung, je voudrais résumer des résultats obtenus par ce dernier, qui indiquent avec force combien, précisément, les structures attachées aux nombres et certaines structures touchant au numineux se répondent et se rejoignent dans un monde ‘commun’, d’essence supérieure, que Jung appelle unus mundus.
Jung a formulé dans son ouvrage Explication de la nature et psyché, l’idée que l’exploration des archétypes des nombres naturels devrait permettre de pénétrer plus avant dans le domaine de cette réalité unitaire de la psyché et de la matière, dont il entrevoyait toute la complexité.
« J’ai le sentiment que le nombre est une clé du mystère, puisqu’il est autant découvert qu’inventé. Il est quantité aussi bien que signification ; sur ce dernier point, je citerai les quantités arithmétiques de l’archétype fondamental de ce qu’on nomme le ‘Soi’ (monade, microcosme, etc.) et ses variantes du quatre, le 3 + 1 et le 4 + 1, qui sont historiquement et empiriquement bien illustrés par des documents. »ix
Sa disciple, Marie-Louis von Franz, a continué les recherches de Jung dans ce domaine. Son livre Nombre et tempsx fournit une abondante source documentaire, anthropologique et ethnographique, et explore la profondeur immémoriale des liens entre le nombre et le sacré.
Elle s’appuie largement sur les travaux antérieurs de Jung, et apporte des notations fort intéressantes, par exemple sur les archétypes du 2 (dualité, opposition, séparation), du 3 (trinité) ou du 4 (quaternion, mandalas).
« Entendu comme dynamisme psychique, l’archétype de la dualité se tient à l’arrière-plan des opérations de répétition et de division. C’est pourquoi le mot signifiant ‘deux’ est apparenté, dans certaines langues primitives, à celui de ‘fendre’, et dans d’autres, à ceux de ‘suivre’ et d’ ‘accompagner’. »xi
Historiquement, c’est à Pythagore que l’on doit d’avoir égalé symboliquement le ‘deux’ à la matière, par opposition à l’esprit qui est représenté par l’‘un’.
Cela incite M.-L. Von Franz à rapprocher conceptuellement le Un et le Deux dans un processus d’engendrement de celui-ci par celui-là:
« Le double aspect de l’Un comme Totalité-Unité et unité de compte (Monotes–Henotes) contient déjà virtuellement le deux. C’est pourquoi l’Un primordial était déjà, en ce qui concerne son contenu (par exemple dans la spéculation gnostique des nombres), caractérisé comme ‘Père-Mère, ‘Silence-Force’ divins. Cf. A Gnostic Coptic Treatise, édité par C.A. Baynes, Cambridge, 1933 (…) Le deux était rattaché à Eve, c’est pourquoi le diable la tenta la première. Il existe ainsi une parenté secrète entre la dualité, le diable et la femme, et le quatre, que l’on peut déduire du deux, a également reçu une valeur négative, en tant que ‘païen’. Le deux est même le diable en personne. Ce principe diabolique de dualité a tenté d’édifier une création opposée à Dieu, luttant contre l’ordre trinitaire du monde. (…) On peut voir une variante de la même idée archétypique dans la théorie cosmogonique de Pascual Jordan, d’après laquelle l’univers serait sorti d’une paire de neutrons. Cf. B. Bavink, Weltschöpfung in Mythos und Religion, Philosophie und Naturwissenschaft, Bâle 1951, pp. 80, 102. »xii
Comment alors la psychologie cognitive peut-elle sérieusement envisager de traiter du concept de nombre, fût-il simplement « naturel », sans prendre en compte également les concepts archétypiques d’une tout autre portée symbolique que sont les idées de l’Un, du dualisme, de la trinité ou des quaternions ?
Pour des psychologues dits ‘cognitifs’, faire l’impasse sur tout ce qui dépasse le plan immédiat de la connaissance claire, revient à ignorer a priori la présence sous-jacente dans la conscience de pensées inconscientes sans concept, et de pensées conscientes pouvant émerger à l’improviste de l’inconscient…
Un autre exemple fera peut-être voir, mieux encore, le fossé, l’abîme même, entre l’approche de la psychologie cognitive et celle de la psychologie des profondeurs.
La psychologie cognitive fait notoirement grand usage des lois de Weber et de Fechner.
Il est intéressant d’en mesurer toute la portée ‘quantitative’, du point de vue expérimental, dans l’observation des réponses à des stimuli sensoriels, mais aussi d’évoquer certaines de leurs implications ‘qualitatives’, si l’on était tenté de les généraliser à d’autres aspects de la conscience, moins sensoriels qu’intuitifs ou conceptuels.
Selon la loi de Weber, plus les grandeurs des stimuli sensoriels augmentent, plus les sensations qu’ils provoquent deviennent imprécises. Autrement dit, plus les nombres qui traduisent les stimulations sensorielles sont grands, plus leur estimation subjective (par la conscience) devient approximative.
Quant à la loi de Fechner, elle stipule que des stimuli d’intensité croissante produisent des effets ressentis qui croissent eux aussi, mais selon une courbe logarithmique, c’est-à-dire qu’ils croissent relativement de moins en moins. Autrement dit, les effets ressentis sont exponentiellement plus faibles que les stimuli, au fur et à mesure que ces derniers augmentent.
Ces lois ne tombent pas du ciel. Elles sont en quelque sorte câblées dans le système neuronal.
Étudier la psychologie cognitive des nombres permet de le prouver, selon S. Dehaene.
Il existerait des « neurones détecteurs de nombres », codant par exemple pour détecter quatre ou cinq objets en même temps. La modélisation explicite de leur fonctionnement montre que, plus les nombres sont grands, plus leur code neural est variable. Selon ce modèle, on peut estimer que le système neuronal alloue d’autant moins de neurones que les nombres augmentent. C’est là, inscrite dans l’architecture neuronale, une première approximation des lois de Weber-Fechner.
Ces lois s’appliquent en principe à des stimuli sensoriels, et à leurs effets psycho-physiologiques induits.
Mais on pourrait, me semble-t-il, concevoir de les appliquer aussi à des stimuli non sensoriels, qui relèveraient par exemple du sentiment, de la cognition, ou de l’intuition…
Pour que cette généralisation soit validée, il faudrait vérifier si des stimuli émotionnels, cognitifs, intuitifs, de plus en plus forts, provoquent des réponses croissantes, elles aussi, mais selon un rythme lui-même progressivement décroissant, par exemple selon les courbes logarithmiques prévues par Fechner.
Est-ce que des doses toujours croissantes de stimuli émotionnels, intellectuels, affectifs, cognitifs affecteraient la psyché, en suivant de telles courbes, de plus en plus aplaties ?
Est-ce que des ‘stimulations’ relatives à des symboles, à des archétypes, à des mythes, ou même à des idées morales, philosophiques, suivraient elles aussi les lois de Weber et de Fechner quant à leur impact sur la psyché individuelle?
Si les lois de Weber-Fechner étaient ainsi généralisables, et s’appliquaient non seulement aux stimuli sensoriels, mais aussi aux stimuli émotionnels, affectifs ou cognitifs, cela aurait d’innombrables et étonnantes conséquences… dont certaines parfaitement contre-intuitives.
Si des chocs émotionnels et affectifs successifs frappaient de façon croissante la conscience, celle-ci ne serait-elle pas de plus en plus émoussée, finissant par réagir proportionnellement de moins en moins ?
Si des idées ou des concepts étaient présentées à la conscience sous une forme de plus en plus ambitieuse, de plus en plus percutante, les lois (généralisées) de Weber et Fechner ne se traduiraient-elles par par des réactions de plus en dubitatives ou même « blasées » de consciences progressivement et logarithmiquement lassées ou même anesthésiées par trop de stimulations ou d’émotions successives ?
Si les lois de Weber et Fechner s’avéraient généralisables aux fonctions les plus hautes ou les plus subtiles de la conscience humaine, et tout indique que cela pourrait en effet être le cas, alors ce serait là une contrainte structurelle extrêmement forte imposée à la conscience humaine, quant à sa capacité de réagir adéquatement et proportionnellement aux idées les plus nouvelles, aux amours les plus violents, aux sentiments les plus élevés, aux intuitions les plus foudroyantes.
Cela expliquerait aussi une sorte de médiocrité générale de la conscience moyenne, progressivement inhibée par sa programmation structurelle, neuronale, synaptique, afin de ressentir de moins en moins des chocs émotionnels, affectifs ou intellectuels de plus en plus élevés.
Cela expliquerait aussi, incidemment, pourquoi les génies de la pensée, les grands amoureux, les mystiques capables des plus grandes révélations, sont si rares.
Plus une idée est grande, folle, immense, géniale, divine même, plus la loi de Fechner tend à la réduire, à la comprimer, à la formater, à la castrer, pour qu’elle reste dans le cadre de ce que la conscience ‘moyenne’ est capable d’encaisser.
Cela est sans doute normal. Les lois de Weber et Fechner sont, elles aussi, nécessaires à la survie de l’espèce. Elles fonctionnent comme une sorte de soupape de sécurité ou de coupe-circuit destiné précisément à empêcher des courts-circuits qui endommagerait le système synaptique et neuronal…
Mais est-ce que ces lois s’appliquent vraiment aux fonctions supérieures de la conscience ?
Et s’appliquent-elles à toutes les consciences, uniformément ?
N’y a-t-il pas d’exception ?
Certaines consciences, peut-être plus douées, ou mieux préparées, ne sont-elles pas justement d’autant plus capables de s’ouvrir à la nouveauté absolue, à la surprise radicale, à la brûlure intolérable, à la vision explosive, à l’intuition déchirante, à la révélation écrasante, que celles-ci sont d’autant plus absolues, radicales, intolérables, explosives, déchirantes, écrasantes ?
Un exemple célèbre de postulation a priori d’une découverte restant encore à faire, en physique, est celui de Wolfgang Pauli prédisant dès 1930 l’existence du neutrino, lequel ne sera détecté qu’en 1956.
De façon analogue, il y a beaucoup de pures vues de l’esprit, dans les domaines spirituels, artistiques ou philosophique, qui n’ont été confirmées que bien longtemps après avoir été conçues.
Nombreuses, dans l’histoire humaine, les voix qui parlent dans le désert, avant d’être un jour entendues…
J’évoquais plus haut les « neurones détecteurs de nombres ».
Existe-t-il des « neurones détecteurs de visions et d’illuminations », des « neurones de la révélation », des neurones détecteurs de l’inouï, du jamais vu ?
Si oui, plus la vision ou l’intuition est puissante (comme celle du prophète illuminé par la révélation), moins le nombre des neurones qui lui est alloué est grand, ou bien moindre est leur réaction relative, si la loi de Weber-Fechner s’applique.
Et si la loi de Weber-Fechner s’applique effectivement aux visions mystiques, que pourrait-on en déduire quant à la nature de celles-ci?
Je répondrai d’emblée que cela prouve seulement qu’on n’aurait encore rien « vu ».
Dans un cerveau à la Fechner, les plus grands génies humains, les prophètes inoubliables, les poètes éruptifs, les inventeurs de mondes, ne seraient jamais que des consciences vite éblouies, et vite aveuglées, par des éclats qui les clouent.
Mais ce genre de question n’intéresse sans doute pas S. Dehaene.
Sa description des neurones détecteurs, ceux qui expliquent la structure neuronale sous-jacente expliquant les lois de Weber et Fechner, m’a donné une idée inattendue.
« Toutes les tâches qui évoquent un sens de la quantité – addition, soustraction, comparaison, mais aussi simple vision d’un chiffre ou dénombrement d’un nuage de points – activent un réseau reproductible de régions, au premier rang desquelles figure le fond du sillon intrapariétal. Cette localisation s’accorde avec les connaissances des neurologues. Dès les années 1920, deux médecins allemands, Henschen et Gerstmann, sur la base de l’observation des nombreux blessés de la première guerre mondiale, avaient montré que les lésions pariétales gauches entraînent une acalculie : le patient ne parvient plus à réaliser des opérations aussi simples que sept moins deux ou trois plus cinq. »xiii
Méditant sur l’idée des liens profonds, subtils, entre le concept de nombre et les représentations du numineux, ainsi que sur le rôle du sillon intrapariétal dans la représentation des nombres, m’est venue en tête la question suivante :
– Le concept d’unité du divin, ou celui de ‘Trinité’ sont-ils ‘activés’ au fond du sillon intrapariétal ?
Les idées du monothéisme et de la structure trinitaire du Dieu Un ne sont-elles pas en effet liées à la conscience de nombres très particuliers, le 1 ou le 3 ?
Ces nombres ne sont-ils pas à la fois de simples nombres naturels, si j’ose dire, mais aussi les symboles numineux des plus haut dogmes religieux ?
Et de là, ma pensée s’est envolée vers les ‘millions d’oiseaux d’or’ qui palpitent au cœur d’un célèbre poème de Rimbaud.
Si le 1 et le 3 se trouvent au fond du sillon intrapariétal, où sont les ‘millions d’oiseaux d’or’ rimbaldiens ?
Élargissons la perspective.
Dans quelles régions du cerveau se trouve ce que le poète « voit »?
Et dans quelles régions se trouvent ce qu’il a « vu » ?
Dans sa lettre du 15 mai 1871 à Paul Demeny, Rimbaud a exposé son programme poétique en quelques phrases elliptiques: « Je dis qu’il faut être voyant, se faire voyant. Le poète se fait voyant par un long, immense et raisonné dérèglement de tous les sens ». Ainsi, « il arrive à l’inconnu, et quand, affolé, il finirait par perdre l’intelligence de ses visions, il les a vues ».
Oui Rimbaud voit, et surtout il a vu. Il en témoigne explicitement dans Le Bateau ivre :
Je sais les cieux crevant en éclairs, et les trombes Et les ressacs et les courants : je sais le soir, L’Aube exaltée ainsi qu’un peuple de colombes, Et j’ai vu quelquefois ce que l’homme a cru voir !
J’ai vu le soleil bas, taché d’horreurs mystiques, Illuminant de longs figements violets, Pareils à des acteurs de drames très-antiques Les flots roulant au loin leurs frissons de volets !
J’ai rêvé la nuit verte aux neiges éblouies Baiser montant aux yeux des mers avec lenteurs, La circulation des sèves inouïes, Et l’éveil jaune et bleu des phosphores chanteurs !
…
J’ai vu des archipels sidéraux ! et des îles Dont les cieux délirants sont ouverts au vogueur : — Est-ce en ces nuits sans fonds que tu dors et t’exiles, Million d’oiseaux d’or, ô future Vigueur ? —
***
Je ne peux m’empêcher, arrivé à ce point, de souligner que Jean-Pierre Changeux lui aussi a « vu », du moins s’il faut en croire Stanislas Dehaene.
Qu’est-ce que Changeux a vu, que Rimbaud n’a pas vu ?
« L’élucidation progressive des réseaux de la décision mentale donne ainsi corps à la vision de Jean-Pierre Changeux qui, dans sa leçon inaugurale, soulignait qu’‘une compatibilité totale de principe existe entre le déterminisme le plus absolu et l’apparente imprévisibilité d’un comportement’. ‘Toute Pensée émet un Coup de Dés’, disait déjà Mallarmé. Conformément au projet défini dans L’Homme neuronal, la variabilité et l’illusoire libre-arbitre des décisions humaines se rattachent à des mécanismes neuronaux simples dont la dynamique gouverne notre comportement. La psychologie naïve se demande comment nous prenons des décisions ; la nouvelle théorie indique comment des décisions se prennent en nous, par brisure de symétrie dans un réseau stochastique et métastable. Dans cette théorie, les lois psychologiques de la chronométrie mentale se déduisent de la physique statistique de réseaux neuronaux, et ceux-ci implémentent, en première approximation, l’algorithme de prise de décision de Turing. »xiv
Changeux, et Dehaene après lui, ont « vu » que « les décisions se prennent en nous, par brisure de symétrie dans un réseau stochastique et métastable »…
Ah ! On comprend beaucoup mieux Rimbaud, dès lors !
Mais, vrai, j’ai trop pleuré ! Les Aubes sont navrantes. Toute lune est atroce et tout soleil amer : L’âcre amour m’a gonflé de torpeurs enivrantes Ô que ma quille éclate ! Ô que j’aille à la mer !
Dans un soudain orage neuronal, la quille du poète a-t-elle éclaté par brisure de symétrie ?
Sa décision d’aller à la mer fût-elle programmée par un réseau stochastique et métastable ?
Tout est possible.
Mais je trouve les aubes ‘cognitives’ beaucoup plus navrantes que les poétiques…
Miguel de Cervantes, Franz Kafka, Karl Kraus, Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem are linked by a strong, subtle and flexible taste for quotation.
They are not the only ones. This list of five authors could of course be extended indefinitely, and include even more famous names.
Cervantes has been said to probably be a « crypto-Marrano », and Kafka, Kraus, Benjamin and Scholem may be labelled as ‘German Jews’, in particular because they have in common the use (and a masterly command) of the German language.
I say that Cervantes was ‘probably’ a « crypto-Marrano » because we know in fact very little about himi, and I use the expression ‘German Jew’ because it is how Gershom Scholem wanted to define Walter Benjamin – rather than ‘Judeo-Germanii‘ , meaning that he had kept the distance of a foreigner, of an alien, of an exiled, vis-à-vis Germany. This distance was probably also shared by Kafka, Kraus and Scholem himself…
What are the links of these five characters with quotation ?
They all considered it as a process of sanctification.
We shall begin with a quotation from Gershom Scholem, himself quoting a short judgment of Walter Benjamin, which the latter made concerning Karl Kraus : « Walter Benjamin finds in the ‘Jewish certainty’ that language is ‘the theater of the sanctification of the name’.» iii
Scholem’s quotation is in reality rather truncated, and also probably wrong on one very important point: the absence of an initial capital N in the word ‘name’. It should in my opinion be spelled ‘Name’, we will see why in a moment.
It is interesting to compare this particular Scholem’s quotation with Rainer Rochlitz’s more faithful and complete version of Benjamin’s original text:
« For the cosmic to-and-fro by which Stefan George ‘divinizes the body and incarnates God’, language is nothing but Jacob’s ladder made of ten thousand rungs of words. In Kraus, on the contrary, language has got rid of all hieratic elements. It is neither a means of prophecy nor of domination. As a place of sacralization of the name, it is opposed, by this Jewish certainty, to the theurgy of the ‘verbal body’.»iv
Given the context, it seems to me that the ‘name’ in question here is actually ‘the Name’, which is the term used by pious Jews to designate God (ha-Chem).
In the original German, by the way, the word ‘name’ (Name) has always an initial capital, as all German nouns have.
Moreover, the capital letter should have remained in the English translation to reflect the subject matter, namely the question of the relationship between language, the ‘theurgy of the Word’ and the incarnation of God (through His ‘Name’).
The ‘theurgy of the Word’ is presented here as an antagonist to what is the object of ‘Jewish certainty’, namely the ‘sacralization’ or ‘sanctification’ of the Name, as the only possible ‘incarnation’ of God.
We see that we are entering directly into the heart of an immensely complex subject, — that of the role of language as an instrument more or less suitable for ensuring the preservation of (Jewish) certainties and affirming the inexpressibility of God, including through His Name (or Names).
Walter Benjamin’s main interest in Karl Kraus is not about the way Judaism deals with the names of God, but about the more general, difficult relationship between (human) language and (divine) justice.
« It has been said of Kraus that he had to ‘defeat Judaism in himself’, that he had ‘passed from Judaism to freedom’, and that in him, too, justice and language condition each other; this is the best refutation of these theses. Worshipping the image of divine justice as language – at the very heart of the German language – is the authentically Judaic somersault by means of which he tries to escape the grip of the devil. »v
Let me underline in this text of Benjamin the expression « the authentically Judaic somersault » and the use of the word « devil ». In a moment, we will find them again in two (essential) texts by Kafkavi. This is certainly not by chance.
But before addressing these points, let us return to Kraus, as interpreted and quoted by Benjamin.
« It is the substance of the law, not its effects, that Kraus indicts. He accuses the law of high treason in relation to justice. More precisely, he denounces the high betrayal of the concept with regard to the verb to which it owes its existence: homicide with premeditation on the imagination, because the imagination dies as soon as a single letter is missing; it is in its honor that he sang his most poignant lament, his Elegy for the death of a phoneme. For above the jurisdiction [Rechtsprechung] there is the spelling [Rechtschreibung], and woe to the former if the latter is damaged. » vii
Yes, spelling is of paramount, theological, and even metaphysical importance…! One might perhaps get an idea of this from the following sequence of rabbinic quotations about a verse from Isaiah whose interpretation of its spelling reveals something essential.
(Indeed essential : nothing less than the creation of this very world as well as that of the world to come may be due to the difference between two Hebrew letters , ה (He) and י (Yod).)
Here is the rabbinic quotation :
« To these words Rabbi Youdan the Nassi cried out: ‘Woe, they have left us [those who knew how to answer], we can no longer find them! I once asked Rabbi Eleazar, and it was not your answer that he gave me, but this one: ‘With YH (be-yah) YHVH shaped the world. (Is. 26:4): The Holy One blessed be He created His world with two letters [Yod (י ) and He (ה)]. Now we cannot know whether this world was created with the ה, and the world to come with the י , or whether this world was created with the י , and the world to come with the ה. From what Rabbi Abahou said in the name of Rabbi Yoḥanan – be-hibaram is be-Hé baram – we learn that this world was created with ה (…) The world to come was created with י : like the י which is bent, the fallen ones in the times to come will have their waists bent and their faces darkened, according to the words: ‘Man’s pride shall be brought down’ (Is. (Is. 2:17) and ‘all false gods will disappear’ (Is. 2:18). « viii
This text explains quite well why « above the jurisdiction [Rechtsprechung] there isthe spelling [Rechtschreibung], and woe to the former if the latter is harmed »….
It is a matter of finding and recognizing the « origin » under the spelling, the letter or the phoneme.
Walter Benjamin comments further on Kraus’ text: « ‘You came from the origin, the origin which is the goal’, these are the words that God addresses, as a comfort and a promise, to ‘the dying man’. This is what Kraus is referring to here. »ix
And he then explains: « The theater of this philosophical scene of recognition in Kraus’s work is lyric poetry, and its language is rhyme: ‘The word that never denies the origin’ and which, like beatitude has its origin at the end of time, has its origin at the end of the verse. The rhyme: two loves carrying the devil to earth. »x
For rhyme is love, love of the word for the word, and love of the verb for the Verb.
« No one has more perfectly dissociated the language from the mind, no one has linked it more closely to Eros, than Kraus did in his maxim: ‘The closer you look at a word, the further it looks at you.’ This is an example of platonic love of language. The only closeness the word cannot escape is rhyme. The primitive, erotic relationship between proximity and distance is expressed in Kraus’ language as rhyme and name. Rhyme – the language goes back to the world of the creature; name – it raises any creature up to it. » xi
Here we are back to the ‘name’. Or, rather, to the ‘Name’.
This ‘Name’ that only angels may ‘quote’.
« In the quotation that saves and punishes, language appears as the matrix of justice. The quotation calls the word by its name, tears it out of its context by destroying it, but in so doing also recalls it to its origin. The word is thus sounded, coherent, within the framework of a new text; it cannot be said that it does not rhyme with anything. As a rhyme, it gathers in its aura what is similar; as a name it is solitary and inexpressive. In front of language, the two domains – origin and destruction – are justified by the quotation. And conversely, language is only completed where they interpenetrate: in the quotation. In it is reflected the language of the angels, in which all words, taken from the idyllic context of meaning, are transformed into epigraphs of the Book of Creation. » xii
Can these lines be considered « philosophical »?
According to Scholem, certainly not…
He clearly states that Walter Benjamin chose the « exodus from philosophy ».
This striking formula is not without evoking some subliminal but foundational reminiscences, including the very Exodus of the Hebrew people out of Egypt .
But what would be an exodus from philosophy? And to go where? Poetry? Theology?
Scholem had in fact borrowed this formula from Margareth Susman, who saw it as an appropriate way to describe the shift from (philosophical) idealism to theology or existentialism in the first decades of the last century.
In Benjamin’s case, would the « Promised Land » be that of Theology?
Scholem gives as an example of Benjamin’s ‘exodus’ his text, ‘Origin of German Baroque Drama’, in which he set out to show how (German) aesthetic ideas were linked ‘most intimately’ xiii with theological categories.
Incidentally, it is noteworthy that Carl Schmitt, at the same time, but from a radically different point of view, it goes without saying, did the same thing in the political and legal fields, as summarized in his famous thesis: « All of the concepts that permeate modern state theory are secularized theological concepts »xiv.
Why did Benjamin want to go on an exodus? Did he want to follow Kafka’s example? Gershom Scholem thinks so. He states that Benjamin « knew that we possess in Kafka the Theologia negativa of a Judaism (…) He saw in the exegeses so frequent in Kafka a precipitate of the tradition of the Torah reflecting itself. Of Don Quixote’s twelve-line exegesis, [Benjamin] said that it was the most accomplished text we have of Kafka’s.» xv
In fact, rather than an exegesis of Don Quixote, this text by Kafka, which is indeed very short, is rather an exegesis of Sancho Pança. Entitled « The Truth about Sancho Pança », which denotes, admittedly, a radical change of point of view, we learn that this apparently secondary character, but in reality essential, « thanks to a host of stories of brigands and novels of chivalry (…), managed so well to distract his demon in him – to whom he later gave the name of Don Quixote – that he committed the craziest acts without restraint, acts which, however, due to the lack of a predetermined object that should precisely have been Sancho Pança, caused no harm to anyone. Motivated perhaps by a sense of responsibility, Sancho Pança, who was a free man, stoically followed Don Quixote in his divagations, which provided him until the end with an entertainment full of usefulness and grandeur. » xvi
Are really these twelve lines, « the most accomplished text we have of Kafka »?
Is Don Quixote, Sancho Pança’s inner ‘demon’?
Is Sancho Pança, a free man, stoically preserving the craziest divagations of his own ‘demon’?
Why not? Anything is possible!
However, Kafka’s works do not lack other ‘accomplished’ passages. If one had to choose one, one would be more embarrassed than Benjamin, no doubt.
I would personally choose « In Our Synagogue« .xvii It is a text of about four pages, which begins like this: « In our synagogue lives an animal about the size of a marten. Sometimes you can see it very well, because up to a distance of about two meters, it tolerates the approach of men. » xviii
It is a text of superior irony, with a slightly sarcastic tone, undeniably Kafkaesque, – but for a good cause.
Kafka wants to describe the color of the « animal » which is « light blue green », but in reality, « its actual color is unknown ». At most, however, he can say that « its visible color comes from the dust and mortar that has become entangled in its hair » and « which is reminiscent of the whitewash inside the synagogue, only it is a little lighter. » xix
He also takes care to describe its behavior: « Apart from its fearful character, it is an extraordinarily calm and sedentary animal; if we did not frighten it so often, it is hardly likely that it would change place, its preferred home is the grid of the women’s compartment. « xx
It frightens the women, but « the reason why they fear it is obscure ». It is true that « at first glance it looks terrifying, » but it is not long before « we realize that all this terror is harmless. «
Above all, it stays away from people.
Then begins, if I may say so, the part that might be called exegesis.
« Its personal misfortune probably lies in the fact that this building is a synagogue, that is to say, a periodically very lively place. If we could get along with it, we could console it by telling it that the community of our small mountain town is diminishing year by year. xxi
Fortunately for it, « it is not impossible that in some time the synagogue will be transformed into a barn or something similar and that the animal will finally know the rest it so painfully misses. » xxii
Then the factual analysis of the « animal »’s behaviour becomes more precise, insistent, explicit.
« It is true that only women fear it, men have long been indifferent to it, one generation has shown it to the other, we have seen it continuously, and in the end we no longer look at it (…) Without women, we would hardly remember its existence. »xxiii
There is no doubt, in ly opinion, that this ‘animal’ is a metaphorical figure. It is not for me to reveal the exact being it probably represents, but it is enough to follow Kafka’s indications.
« It’s already a very old animal, it doesn’t hesitate to make the most daring leap, which, by the way, it never misses, it has turned in the void and here it is already continuing its way. » xxiv
What does this animal want? « No doubt it would rather live hidden, as it does at times when there are no services, probably in some wall hole that we have not yet discovered. » xxv
Kafka then gives more and more precise elements. « If it has a preference for heights, it is naturally because it feels safer there (…) but it is not always there, sometimes it goes a little lower towards the men; the curtain of the Ark of the Covenant is held by a shiny copper bar that seems to attract it, it is not uncommon for it to slip in there, but it always remains quiet. » xxvi
Criticism then is becoming more biting.
« Hasn’t it been living for many years completely on its own? Men don’t care about its presence (…) And of course, divine service with all its fuss can be very frightening for the animal, but it is always repeated. » xxvii
Perhaps the most astonishing thing is the fear that the animal seems to be permanently seized with.
« Is it the memory of long-gone times or the foreboding of times to come? »xxviii
Perhaps both at the same time, so much the animal seems to know its world.
Then comes the final stunt.
« Many years ago, they say, we would have really tried to evict the animal. »xxix
A very serious accusation, of course. It may be true, unfortunately, but it is even more likely to be a pure invention. What is known is that the case has been carefully studied by the rabbinic hierarchy.
« However, there is evidence that it was examined from the point of view of religious jurisdiction whether such an animal could be tolerated in the house of God. The opinion of various famous rabbis was sought, and opinions were divided, the majority being in favor of expulsion and re-consecration of the temple.»xxx
This opinion seems undoubtedly impeccable from a legal point of view, but materially inapplicable .
« In fact, it was impossible to seize the animal, therefore impossible to expel it. For only if one had been able to seize it and transport it away from there, could one have had the approximate certainty of being rid of it. » xxxi
What do we learn from this quotation ?
I will answer with yet another quote and a prophecy.
« The intellectual nature of man is a simple matrix of ideas, a receptivity limited by the life of his own activity, so that the spirit of man as well as the feminine nature is capable of giving birth to the truth, but needs to be fertilized in order to come to the act. Man, as a member of two regions, needs both to reach maturity. » xxxii
Just as the most important prophecies once were only quotations, I believe that a relevant quotation can be understood as a prophecy.
Every real prophecy is an attempt at fecundation. The deposit of a fecundating word, like a living germ coming to intrude into the matrix of the spirit, – or like a marten in a synagogue…
Be it in the matrix of a woman, in the spirit of a man or in a synagogue, what really matters is that there is somewhere, a place in the heights, where some intruding « animal » (in the literal sense, a « living » being) must be tamed, and whose fears must be calmed, in view of the times yet to come.
_____________________________
i Michel de Castillo writes about Cervantes: « He was suspected, he is still suspected, of having suspicious origins. He has even written specious books, full of cabalistic interpretations. Some of his words have been read in Hebrew, given biblical allusions, even though we are at least certain of one thing: if he is of Marrano origin, Cervantes did not know a word of Hebrew. « Dictionnaire amoureux de l‘Espagne, « Cervantes (Miguel de) », p. 163.
iiGershom Scholem. Benjamin and his angel. Trad. Philippe Ivernel. Ed. Rivages, Paris, 1995, p.15
iiiGershom Scholem. Benjamin and his angel. Trad. Philippe Ivernel. Ed. Rivages, Paris, 1995, p. 69.
ivWalter Benjamin. Karl Kraus. Works II, Translated from German by Rainer Rochlitz. Gallimard, 2000, p. 262.
vWalter Benjamin. Karl Kraus. Works II, Translated from German by Rainer Rochlitz. Gallimard, 2000, pp. 248-249.
viIn Kafka’s text ‘In Our Synagogue’, about an animal that serves as a metaphor for God, we find this very beautiful description of a divine somersault: « It is already a very old animal, it does not hesitate to make the most daring leap, which moreover it never misses, it has turned in the void and here it is already continuing its path. « Kafka. In our synagogue. Complete Works II. Ed. Gallimard. 1980, p.663.
As for the word ‘demon’, we find it in another text by Kafka: « Sancho Pança, thanks to a host of stories of brigands and novels of chivalry (…), managed so well to distract his demon – to whom he later gave the name Don Quixote – from him. « Kafka. The truth about Sancho Pança. Complete Works II. Ed. Gallimard. 1980, p.541.
viiWalter Benjamin. Karl Kraus. Works II, Translated from German by Rainer Rochlitz. Gallimard, 2000, p. 249.
viiiMidrach Rabba, Volume I, Genesis Rabba. Ch. XII § 10, translated from Hebrew by Bernard Maruani and Albert Cohen-Arazi. Ed. Verdier, 1987, p. 155. See also On Some Secrets of the Tetragrammaton YHVH).
ixWalter Benjamin. Karl Kraus. Works II, Translated from German by Rainer Rochlitz. Gallimard, 2000, p. 263.
xWalter Benjamin. Karl Kraus. Works II, Translated from German by Rainer Rochlitz. Gallimard, 2000, p. 263.
xiWalter Benjamin. Karl Kraus. Works II, Translated from German by Rainer Rochlitz. Gallimard, 2000, pp. 265-266.
xiiWalter Benjamin. Karl Kraus. Works II, Translated from German by Rainer Rochlitz. Gallimard, 2000, pp. 267-268.
xiiiGershom Scholem. Benjamin and his angel. Trad. Philippe Ivernel. Ed. Rivages, Paris, 1995, p. 49.
God indeed is one, – but His forces and His powers (i.e. His elohim and His sefirot) are more than multiple, according to the Jewish Kabbalah.
This idea unites without contradiction monotheistic and polytheistic intuitions.
In contrast, one cannot say that man is really one, – nor the world or the cosmos for that matter. But neither can we say that their abundant multiplicities are a substitute for unity.
Men and worlds are certainly diverse, divided, mixed, undefined and indefinable.
But this diversity, this division, this mixing, this indefinition, are relative. They find their limits, if only in time and space. Men, like worlds, are indefinite, but certainly not infinite.
In the apparent profusion of innumerable beings and the even more abundant moments that compose them, forms of singularities emerge, for a time. Here and there appear strange quarks, galactic clusters, people and consciousnesses…
But are these singularities units? To put it another way, are these singularities as ‘one’ as God is said to be ‘one’?
Busy, unconscious and composite crowds swarm at all times in every and each one man. They are molecular, chromosomal, microbial, neuronal, synaptic, parasitic crowds, you name it.
What will remain of them at the end of time?
If man thinks he will ever be one, death always takes charge, in the end, of testing this dubious sense of unitive dream.
Conversely, if man is not one, if he is other than one, what is he in reality?
Several hypotheses are worth considering.
Man is a diachronic being.
The immanent multiplicity is revealed, over long periods of time, by the accumulation of the diversity. What we were fetus, will we lose it as we die ? Or will we not rather summarize it?
Does the flower of youth lose only its petals and its radiance in the shadows of maturity, or in the night of agony, or does it not rather reveal its subtle, invisible and irradiant perfumes?
Let’s change metaphors.
If man was a kind of vast library, which book would summarize him best? Or could we only pick out a few scattered ‘good excerpts’? Or, even, shouldn’t we be satisfied with a single chosen line, at the corner of a forgotten paragraph, or a hallucinated word, to finally express his supposed unity, his only essential meaning?
2. Man is a synchronic being.
Just as a (infinite) mathematical curve can be summarized at each of its points by the (itself infinite) set of its derivatives, so one could suppose that at any moment of his life, the being of man could contain the (apparently infinite) set of his virtualities in the making. Always still in epigenesis, man is neither his sex nor his brain, neither his spleen nor his pancreas, neither his heart nor his blood, neither his very soul nor his faulty memory, but all this simultaneously.
Reason is road, cunning and cog, and blood is place and sense. The soul animates, and elevates, she borders on drunkenness, but often sleeps in the darkness of memories. In the lymph bathes the light of hope. Saliva drowns the suns of taste, the breath tempers the twilights of consciousness.
3. Man is a distributed (or swarming) being.
A more fantastic hypothesis assumes a ‘self’ which doubts itself. It is equivalent to the idea that any ‘I’ could be defined by the sum of all the ‘you’ encountered throughout life, as well as by the sum of all the ‘us’ felt, and even the anonymous crowd of all the ‘them’ surrounding the ‘I’, be they effective or only conceived. The human ‘I’ is still alone, singular, but mainly made of indissoluble pluralities, external multitudes, and produced by entire societies, and immemorial histories.
Whether man is diachronic, synchronic, distributed, swarming, or all of them in turn, or all of them simultaneously, winds down to being the same. It is at the time of death that the ‘I’ gets to know what he really is: either ‘nothing’, just ‘nothing’, or some entity allowed to continue ‘being’ in an yet unknown, sublimated form.
There is no point in arguing about this sort of conjecture, nobody knows the end of the story, but we will all know that end, when the evening comes.
To conclude with an opening, I would like to quote a fragment from the pre-Socratic philosopher Gorgias :
« There is nothing obvious about being because it doesn’t appear [dokein]. To appear is weak, since it does not succeed in being. »i
To put it another way, perhaps more clearly, and to fit this ancient and lively thought into a long perspective :
« The way in which God has been thought of for centuries no longer convinces anyone; if something is already dead, it can only be the traditional way of thinking about God. What is really dead is the fundamental distinction between the sensory domain and the supra-sensory domain. »ii
Really dead ?
Then we need to follow up with an essential intuition of Nietzsche, which Martin Heidegger (quoted by Hannah Arendt) re-ormulated as follows:
« The destruction of the supra-sensible also suppresses the purely sensible, and thus the difference between the two.»iii
If the supra-sensible and the sensible are, in the final analysis, no different, then there is also no essential difference between transcendence and immanence.
And, consequently, there is no essential difference between the Creator (either immanent or transcendant) and the Creation…
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iDie Fragmente des Vorsokratiker. Vol. II, B 26. Hermann Diels and Walther Kranz, 1959. Quoted by Hannah Arendt. The life of the spirit. Thought. The will. Translated by Lucienne Lotringer. PUF, 1981, p.45
iiHannah Arendt. The life of the spirit. The thought. The will. Translation by Lucienne Lotringer. PUF, 1981, p.28
iiiMartin Heidegger. Paths that lead nowhere. Trad. W. Brokmeier. Paris 1962, p.173. Quoted by Hannah Arendt. The life of the spirit. Thought. The will. Translated by Lucienne Lotringer. PUF, 1981, p.29
Franz Rosenzweig is a prophet of the 20th century (there are not so many), whose name means ‘branch of roses’. Zebrased with inchoate intuitions, and seraphic brilliance, a short text of him astonishes me by its searing audacity:
« Redemption delivers God, the world and man from the forms and morphisms that Creation has imposed on them. Before and after, there is only the « beyond ». But the in-between, Revelation, is at the same time entirely beyond, for (thanks to it) I am myself, God is God, and the world is world, and absolutely beyond, for I am with God, God is with me, and where is the world? (« I do not desire the earth »). Revelation overcomes death, creates and institutes in its place the redeeming death. He who loves no longer believes in death and believes only in death.» i
The ambiguity of Revelation in relation to the Redemption, but also its invitations to openness, to invention, are staged here.
On the one hand, Revelation is addressed to the man of the earth, to the children of the clay, immersed in worldly immanence, immersed in the closed orbs of their minds.
On the other hand, it affirms the absolute transcendence of the Creator, opening worlds, flaring very backwards towards unheard-of beginnings, and accelerating very forwards towards an unthinkable afterlife.
Can we connect these two poles, seemingly opposite?
For Rosenzweig, Revelation is situated in time, that time which is the proper time of the world, between Creation and Redemption – the two figures, original and eschatological, the two ‘moments’ of the ‘beyond’ of time.
The unique role of Creation is inexplicable if we consider it only as a divine fiat. Why inexplicable? Because such a fiat displays neither its reason nor its why. It is more consistent with the anthropological structure of human experience (and probably with the very structure of the brain) to consider that even God does nothing for nothing.
An ancient answer to this riddle may be found in the Vedic idea of Creation.
In the Veda, Creation is thought as being a sacrifice of God.
Two thousand years later, this sacrifice will be called kenosis by Christians, and even later (in the Kabbalah of the Middle Age) Jews will call it tsimtsum.
The Vedic idea of God’s sacrifice – is incarnated in the sacrifice of Prajāpati, the supreme God, the Creator of the worlds, at the price of His own substance.
It is certainly difficult to conceive of God’s holocaust by (and for) Himself, willingly sacrificing His own glory, His power and His transcendence, – in order to transcend Himself in this very sacrifice.
How can a human brain understand God transcending Himself!
It is difficult, of course, but less difficult than understanding a Creation without origin and without reason, which refers by construction to the absolute impotence of all reason, and to its own absurdity.
With or without reason, with or without sacrifice, Creation obviously represents a ‘beyond’ of our capacity to understand.
But reason wants to reason and tries to understand.
In the hypothesis of God’s sacrifice, what would be the role of Creation in this divine surpassing?
Would God make a covenant with His Creation, ‘giving’ it, by this means, His breath, His life, His freedom, His spirit?
Would God give the responsibility for the World and Mankind to multiply and make this Breath, this Life, this Freedom, this Spirit bear fruit throughout time?
At least there is in this view a kind of logic, though opaque and dense.
The other pole of the cosmic drama – Redemption – is even more ‘beyond’ human intelligence. But let us have a try to understand it.
Redemption « frees God, the world and man from the forms imposed on them by Creation, » Rosenzweig suggests.
Does Redemption deliver God from God Himself? Does it deliver Him from His infinity, if not from His limit? from His transcendence, if not from His immanence? from His righteousness, if not from His goodness?
It is more intuitive to understand that it also liberates the world (i.e. the total universe, the integral Cosmos) from its own limits – its height, width and depth. But does it free it from its immanence?
It frees man, at last.
Does that mean Redemption frees man from his dust and clay?
And from his breath (nechma), which binds him to himself?
And from his shadow (tsel) and his ‘image’ (tselem), which binds him to the light?
And from his blood (dam) and his ‘likeness’ (demout), which structure and bind him (in his DNA itself)?
What does Rosenzweig mean when he says: « Redemption delivers God (…) from the forms that Creation has imposed »?
It is the role of Revelation to teach us that Creation has necessarily imposed certain structures. For example, it imposes the idea that the ‘heavens’ (chammayim) are in essence made of ‘astonishment’, and perhaps even ‘destruction’ (chamam).
But the truth is that we don’t know what ‘to redeem’ means, – apart from showing the existence of a link between Death, the Exodus from the world, and man.
We must try to hear and understand the voice of this new prophet, Rosenzweig.
He says that to believe in Redemption is to believe only in love, that is, to believe « only in death ».
For it has been said that « strong as death is love » (ki-‘azzah kham-mavêt ahabah), as the Song saysii.
Revelation is unique in that it is ‘one’ between two ‘moments’, two ‘beyond’.
It is unique, being ‘below’ between two ‘beyond’.
Being ‘below’ it is not inexpressible, – and being ‘revealed’ it is not as inexpressible as the ‘beyond’ of Creation and Redemption, which can only be grasped through what Revelation wants to say about it.
The Revelation is told, but not by a single oracular jet.
She is not given just at once. She is continuous. She spreads out in time. She is far from being closed, no doubt. No seal has been placed on her moving lips. No prophet can reasonably claim to have sealed her endless source foreveriii.
Time, time itself, constitutes all the space of Revelation, which we know has once begun. But we don’t know when Revelation will end. For now, Revelation is only ‘below’, and will always remain so, – as a voice preparing the way for a ‘beyond’ yet to come.
And besides, what is really known about what has already been ‘revealed’?
Can we be sure at what rate the Revelation is being revealed?
Can we read her deep lines, hear her hidden melodies?
Does she appear in the world only in one go or sporadically, intermittently? With or without breathing pauses?
Won’t her cannon thunder again?
And even if she were « sealed », aren’t the interpretations, the glosses, part of her open breath?
And what about tomorrow?
What will Revelation have to say in six hundred thousand years from now?
Or in six hundred million years?
Will not then a cosmic Moses, a total Abraham, a universal Elijah, chosen from the stars, come in their turn to bring some needed Good News?
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iFranz Rosenzweig. The Man and His Work. Collected writings 1. letters and diaries, 2 vol. 1918-1929. The Hague. M.Nijhoft, 1979, p.778, quoted by S. Mosès. Franz Rosenzweig. Sous l’étoile. Ed. Hermann. 2009, p. 91.
iiiThe Torah itself, who can claim to have really read it?
« Although Thorah was quite widespread, the absence of vowel points made it a sealed book. To understand it, one had to follow certain mystical rules. One had to read a lot of words differently than they were written in the text; to attach a particular meaning to certain letters and words, depending on whether one raised or lowered one’s voice; to pause from time to time or link words together precisely where the outward meaning seemed to demand the opposite (…) What was especially difficult in the solemn reading of the Thorah was the form of recitative to be given to the biblical text, according to the modulation proper to each verse. The recitative, with this series of tones that rise and fall in turn, is the expression of the primitive word, full of emphasis and enthusiasm; it is the music of poetry, of that poetry that the ancients called an attribute of the divinity, and which consists in the intuition of the idea under its hypostatic envelope. Such was the native or paradisiacal state, of which only a few dark and momentary glimmers remain today. « J.-F. Molitor. Philosophy of tradition. Trad Xavier Duris. Ed. Debécourt. Paris, 1837. p.10-11
La religion naturelle de l’humanité est le chamanisme. Depuis des temps immémoriaux, et sur toute la surface de la Terre, en Sibérie, en Amazonie, en Afrique ou en Laponie, des chamanes de toutes ethnies, langues et cultures, ont mis en lumière la puissance latente du numineux dans la conscience d’Homo Sapiens.
Mais c’est au Ṛg Veda (en devanāgarī : ऋग्वेद) que revient d’incarner sous une forme hautement élaborée et conceptualisée une des traditions spirituelles les plus anciennes de l’humanité. Les livres (ou mandalas) du Ṛg Veda ont d’abord été fidèlement transmis par oral depuis le début du 2ème millénaire avant notre ère, dans la langue savante et raffinée du sanskrit, avant d’être enfin fixés par écrit.
Le passé est l’une des puissances de l’avenir. Par sa position ancienne, unique et originaire, dans la suite des spiritualités humaines, le Ṛg Veda éclaire en partie ce que furent les rêves de l’humanité, jadis, — songes qui continuent de hanter aujourd’hui les âmes non-mortes.
De l’étude attentive et comparative de ses versets, il me semble que l’on peut imaginer comment de nouveaux rêves, sans doute nécessaires, émaneront des braises passées, et brûleront d’incandescence l’âme des générations à venir.
Le Ṛg Veda portait déjà des idées métaphysiques de portée universelle, à travers les concepts de Parole, de Pensée, d’Infini, d’Amour, de Sacrifice, et d’Alliance (du Divin et de l’Humain), — et tout cela plusieurs millénaires avant que les monothéismes judaïque et chrétien ne leur donne des formes sinon équivalentes, du moins comparables.
La Parole.
Plus de trois mille ans avant que l’Évangile de Jean ne célèbre la divinité du Verbe (« Au commencement était le Verbe »), la Parole (vāc) était déjà au cœur du Ṛg Veda. Elle y possède une essence divine, et se présente comme une ‘Personne’, non pas celle d’un Messie christique, mais s’incarnant sous les espèces d’une ‘Femme’, aimante. « Plus d’un qui voit n’a pas vu la Parole. Plus d’un qui entend ne l’entend pas. A celui-ci, Elle a ouvert son corps comme à son mari une femme aimante aux riches atours.»iv
La Pensée
Dans le Ṛg Veda, la Pensée (manas) est l’une des hautes métaphores du Divin. D’autres philosophies et religions célébrèrent aussi la Pensée divine, par exemple en tant qu »Intellect’, en tant que ‘Saint-Esprit’ ou encore sous le nom de ‘Binah’ (l’une des sefiroth des Kabbalistes). Mais dans le Ṛg Veda, l’intuition de la Pensée divine possède d’emblée une force originaire, une puissance de création propre au Divin même.
« Celle en qui reposent prières, mélodies et formules, comme les rais au moyeu du char, celle en qui est tissée toute la réflexion des créatures, la Pensée : puisse ce qu’Elle conçoit m’être propice ! »v
L’Infini
Le Ṛg Veda possède l’idée d’un Dieu infini, caché, sur qui l’univers tout entier repose. Ce Dieu a pour nom l’ « Ancien », — ce qui rappelle le nom donné à Dieu par la cabale juive trois mille ans plus tard: l’ « Ancien des jours ».
« Manifeste, il est caché. Antique est son nom. Vaste son concept. Tout cet univers est fondé sur lui. Sur lui repose ce qui se meut et respire. (…) L’Infini est étendu en directions multiples, l’Infini et le fini ont des frontières communes. Le Gardien de la Voûte céleste les parcourt en les séparant, lui qui sait ce qui est passé et ce qui est à venir. (…) Sans désir, sage, immortel, né de soi-même, se rassasiant de sève vitale,, ne souffrant d’aucun manque – il ne craint pas la mort celui qui a reconnu l’Ātman sage, sans vieillesse, toujours jeune. »vi
L’Amour
Dans la Bible hébraïque, le Cantique des Cantiques montre avec un éclat sans pareil que la célébration de l’amour humain peut s’interpréter comme une métaphore vivante et crue de l’amour entre l’âme et Dieu. Cette même idée se trouve déjà dans le Ṛg Veda, qui présente l’amour incandescent de la Divinité et de l’âme humaine.
« Comme la liane tient l’arbre embrassé de part en part, ainsi embrasse-moi, sois mon amante, et ne t’écarte pas de moi ! Comme l’aigle pour s’élancer frappe au sol de ses deux ailes, ainsi je frappe à ton âme, sois mon amante et ne t’écarte point de moi ! Comme le soleil un même jour entoure le ciel et la terre, ainsi j’entoure ton âme. Sois mon amante et ne t’écarte pas de moi ! Désire mon corps, mes pieds, désire mes cuisses ; que tes yeux, tes cheveux, amoureuse, se consument de passion pour moi ! »vii
Cela invite à considérer, me semble-t-il, une question d’ordre anthropologique. La célébration de l’amour comme image de la procession divine dans l’âme humaine, a pu jaillir dans les profondeurs de l’inconscient collectif, dans l’Inde védique, mais aussi dans l’Egypte ancienne, puis dans les Écritures juives et les Prophètes.
Pourquoi, depuis tant de millénaires, une telle convergence des spiritualités originaires?
Le Sacrifice
Dans les temps anciens, les nuits étaient claires. Ce qui frappait l’imagination des hommes, c’était d’abord l’immensité du voile étoilé, la profondeur du cosmos, au-dessus de leurs têtes, mais aussi la complexité des liens qui alliaient ces puissances lumineuses, démesurées et lointaines à leurs chétives et obscures existences.
Bien avant qu’Abraham consente au sacrifice du sang, celui de son fils, remplacé à l’ultime moment par le sang d’un animal innocent, les prêtres védiques sacrifiaient aussi à la divinité, — non par le sang du fils ou du bouc, mais par le lait de la vache.
Dans le sacrifice védique, le beurre fondu (ghṛita) représentait symboliquement le miracle cosmique. Il incarnait l’alliance du soleil, de la nature et de la vie. Le soleil est la source de toute vie dans la nature, il fait pousser l’herbe, laquelle nourrit la vache, qui exsude son suc, le lait, lequel devient ‘beurre’ par l’action de l’homme (qui le baratte). Le beurre, mêlé d’eau pure et de sucs végétaux, et fondant sous l’action de la chaleur, vient couler librement comme sôma sur l’autel du sacrifice. Il s’embrase par le feu sacré, sur la pierre appelée yoni. Cette vive flamme engendre la lumière, et répand une odeur capable de monter aux cieux, concluant symboliquement le cycle. Cérémonie simple et profonde, prenant son origine dans la nuit des temps, et possédant une vision sûre de l’universelle cohésion entre le divin, le cosmos et l’humain.
« De l’océan, la vague de miel a surgi, avec le sôma, elle a revêtu, la forme de l’ambroisie. Voilà le nom secret du Beurre, langue des Dieux, nombril de l’immortel. (…) Disposé en trois parts, les Dieux ont découvert dans la vache le Beurre que les Paṇi avaient caché. Indra engendra une de ces parts, le Soleil la seconde, la troisième on l’a extraite du sage, et préparée par le rite. (…) Elles jaillissent de l’océan de l’Esprit, ces coulées de Beurre cent fois encloses, invisibles à l’ennemi. Je les considère, la verge d’or est en leur milieu. (…) Elles sautent devant Agni, belles et souriantes comme des jeunes femmes au rendez-vous ; les coulées de Beurre caressent les bûches flambantes, le Feu les agrée, satisfait. »i
Il n’est pas inintéressant de noter ici que l’idée d’une sacralité condensée dans le ‘beurre’ a été reprise plus tard en Israël même.
Les Prêtres, les Prophètes et les Rois d’Israël n’ont pas craint de se faire oindre d’une huile sacrée, d’un chrême, concentrant le sens et la puissance. Dans l’huile sainte, l’huile d’onction, convergent aussi, magiquement, le produit du Cosmos, le travail des hommes, et la puissance vivifiante du Dieu.
L’Alliance
L’idée d’un lien entre l’homme et le divin vient d’au-delà des âges. Et parmi les métaphores que l’idée du ‘lien’ rendent désirables, il y a celle du ‘cheveu’. C’est d’ailleurs à la fois une métaphore et une métonymie. Les cheveux sont sur la tête, couvrant le cerveau de l’homme, voltigeant au-dessus de ses pensées. Comment ne pas penser qu’ils peuvent adéquatement figurer autant de liens avec la sphère divine?
Cheveux et poils poussent sans cesse, depuis la naissance, et jusque après la mort. Ils accompagnent la transformation en profondeur du corps, pour la vie, l’amour et la génération. La terre féconde, elle-même, se couvre d’une sorte de chevelure quand la moisson s’annonce. Le génie des anciens voyait dans cette image un ‘lien’ réel entre la nature, l’homme et le divin.
Un hymne du Ṛg Veda allie ces trois mondes dans une seule formule : « Fais pousser l’herbe sur ces trois surfaces, ô Indra, la tête du Père, et le champ que voilà, et mon ventre ! Ce Champ là-bas qui est le nôtre, et mon corps que voici, et la tête du Père, rends tout cela poilu ! »ii
Le cheveu, dans le Ṛg Veda, sert aussi à décrire l’action du divin. Il est l’une des métaphores qui permet de le qualifier indirectement. « Le Chevelu porte le Feu, le Chevelu porte le Sôma, le Chevelu porte les mondes. Le Chevelu porte tout ce qu’on voit du ciel. Le Chevelu s’appelle Lumière. »iii
Que conclure du fait qu’il y a plus de cinq millénaires, le Ṛg Veda incarnait déjà une spiritualité de la Parole, de la Pensée, de l’Infini, de l’Amour, du Sacrifice, de l’Alliance?
L’ancienneté de ces archétypes donne à penser qu’une anthropologie de l’esprit et de la conscience, par-delà les cultures et les âges, est plus que jamais nécessaire, et qu’elle ouvre des perspectives éblouissantes.
Une telle anthropologie de la conscience éclairerait d’une lumière spéciale l’essence même de l’âme humaine, sa puissance universelle, et esquisserait l’étendue putative de ses futures métamorphoses.
Dans notre époque étrécie, sans horizon, sans vision, quelle recherche pourrait être plus féconde?
S’appuyant sur une archéologie comparée du rêve humain, cette recherche future pourrait en particulier s’attacher à imaginer de nouveaux Récits, dont la modernité écrasée, blessée, souffre tant de l’absence.
De nouveaux Grands Récits, qui n’oblitéreraient pas les anciens mythes, mais s’attacheraient à mieux déployer leurs harmoniques impensées, inouïes, ouvriraient sans doute des avenues accélérées, et des chemins de traverse, dans le sens d’une Histoire universelle et sans fin, qui reste à accomplir.
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iṚgVéda IV,58. Trad. Louis Renou. Hymnes et prières du Véda. 1938
Born in 1886 into an assimilated Jewish family, Franz Rosenzweig decided to convert to Christianity in the 1910s, after numerous discussions with his cousins, Hans and Rudolf Ehrenberg, who had already converted, and with his friend Eugen Rosenstock, also a converted Jew. But he renounced the conversion after attending the Yom Kippur service in a Berlin synagogue in 1913.
Shortly afterwards, he wrote in the trenches of the First World War his masterpiece, The Star of Redemption, which offers a kind of parallelism between Judaism and Christianity.
Parallels that do not meet, except perhaps at the end of Time.
I find Rosenzweig’s essay truly significant for a double distance, for a constitutive split, the outcome of which is difficult to see, unless there is a total change of paradigm – which would perhaps be the real issue, in some future.
Rosenzweig asserts that Christianity faces three « dangers » that it « will never overcome ». These « dangers » are essentially of a conceptual nature: « the spiritualization of the concept of God, the apotheosis granted to the concept of man, the panthetization of the concept of the world ». i
The Christian concept of God, the Christian concept of man, the Christian concept of the world, are wrong and dangerous, according to Rosenzweig, because they imply an attack on the absolute transcendence of God, to which, by contrast, Judaism is supposed to be fundamentally attached.
« Let the Spirit be the guide in all things, and not God; let the Son of Man, and not God, be the Truth; let God one day be in all things, and not above all; these are the dangers. »ii
Rosenzweig cannot accept that the absolutely transcendent God of Judaism can be represented by His « Spirit », even though this Spirit is « holy ».
Why not? Is God not His own Spirit?
No. God’s transcendence is probably so absolute that the use of the word « spirit » is still too anthropomorphic in this context. From the point of view of Judaism, as interpreted by Rosenzweig, to use the word « spirit » as an hypostasis of God is an attack on its absolute transcendence.
But, is not God called in the Torah the « God of spirits » (Num 16:22), because He is the Creator? Could the spirit, as created by God, then be a « substance » which God and man would then have in common? No. This is not acceptable. The very principle of the absolute transcendence of God excludes any idea of a community of substance between the divine and the human, even that of the « spirit ».
Nor can Rosenzweig accept that the absolutely transcendent God of Judaism could be represented here below by a « Son », or horresco referens, could lower Himself to humiliation by consenting to a human « incarnation », to whom He would further delegate, ipso facto, the care and privilege of revealing His Truth to men.
Finally, and a fortiori, Rosenzweig obviously cannot accept that the absolutely transcendent God can condescend to any immanence whatsoever, and in particular by coming into the « world » to dwell « in all ».
Judaism will not compromise.
The absolute transcendence of God, of His revelation, and of Redemption, are infinitely beyond the spirit, infinitely beyond the human, infinitely beyond the world.
Rosenzweig’s attack on Christianity focuses on its supposed « concepts ».
Concepts are positive attempts by the human mind to capture the essence of something.
The dogma of the absolute transcendence of God excludes from the outset any attempt whatsoever to « conceptualize » it, whether through names, attributes or manifestations.
The only acceptable conceptualization is the concept of the impossibility of any conceptualization. The only possible theology is an absolutely negative theology, rigorously and infinitely apophatic.
But then what about the revelation of His Name, made to Moses by God Himself?
What about the theophanies found in the Torah?
What about God’s dialogues with the Prophets?
Or in another vein, what about the granting of a Covenant between God and his People?
What about thewandering of the Shekhina in this world, and her « suffering »?
Or, on yet another level, how to understand the idea that heaven and earth are a « creation » of God, with all that this entails in terms of responsibility for the content of their future and the implications of their inherent potentialities?
Are these not notable exceptions, through word or spirit, to thevery idea of God’s absolute, radicaltranscendence? Are they not in fact so many links, so many consensual interactions between God Himself and all that is so infinitely below Him, – all that is so infinitely nothing?
These questions are not dealt with by Rosenzweig. What is important to him is to reproach Christianity for « exteriorizing itself in the Whole, » for « dispersing its rays » in the march through time, with the spiritualization [of the concept of God], the divinization [of the concept of man] and the mondanization [of transcendence].
But Rosenzweig’s reproaches do not stop there. For good measure, he also criticizes the « dangers » peculiar to Judaism.
Where Christianity sins by « dispersing », by « externalizing » the idea of God, Judaism sins on the contrary by « shrinking », by confinement in « the narrow », by refuge in « a narrow home »iii. To sum up: « The Creator has shrunk to the creator of the Jewish world, Revelation has only taken place in the Jewish heart.» iv
Franz Rosenzweig analyzes the « Jewish dangers » in this manner :
« Thus, in the depths of this Jewish feeling, any split, anything that encompasses Jewish life, has become very narrow and simple. Too simple and too narrow, that is what should be said, and in this narrowness, as many dangers should be fanned as in Christian dilatation. Here it is the concept of God that was in danger: in our midst, it is His World and His Man who seem to be in danger (…) Judaism, which is consumed within, runs the risk of gathering its heat in its own bosom, far from the pagan reality of the world. In Christianity, the dangers were named: spiritualization of God, humanization of God, mondanization of God; here [in Judaism] they are called denial of the world, contempt for the world, suffocation of the world.
Denial of the world, when the Jew, in the proximity of his God, anticipated the Redemption for his own benefit, forgetting that God was Creator and Redeemer, that, as Creator, He conserved the whole world and that in the Revelation He ultimately turned His face to mankind at large.
Contempt for the world, when the Jew felt himself to be a remnant, and thus to be the true man, originally created in the image of God and living in the expectation of the end within this original purity, thus withdrawing from man: yet it was precisely with his hardness, forgetting God, that the Revelation of God’s love had come about, and it was this man who now had to exercise this love in the unlimited work of Redemption.
Choking of the world, finally, when the Jew, in possession of the Law revealed to him and becoming flesh and blood in his spirit, now had the nerve to regulate the being there at every renewed moment and the silent growth of things, even to pretend to judge them.
These three dangers are all necessary consequences of the interiority that turned away from the world, just as the dangers of Christianity were due to the exteriorization of the self turned towards the world. » v
Not being able to resolve to elect a single champion, Rosenzweig concludes that Jews and Christians are in fact working at the same task, and that God cannot deprive Himself of either of them: « He has bound them together in the closest reciprocity. To us [Jews] He has given eternal life by lighting in our hearts the fire of the Star of His truth. He has placed Christians on the eternal path by making them follow the rays of the Star of His truth throughout the centuries to the eternal end.»vi
The life, the truth, the way. The Anointed One from Nazareth, the Christian Messiah, had already designated himself by these three words, identifying them with his own Person.
Shrinkage, narrowness, suffocation.
Dispersion, expansion, paganization.
Let the millennia flow, let the eons bloom.
What will the world be like in three hundred billion years? Will it be Jewish? Christian? Buddhist? Nihilist? Gnostic? Or will the world be All Other?
Will we one day see the birth of a non-Galilean Messiah or a non-Anointed Anointed One, far away in galaxies at the unimagined borders of the known universes, revealing in clear language a meta-Law as luminous as a thousand billion nebulae assembled in one single point?
Or is it the very message of the Scriptures that, by some miracle, will be repeated, word for word, letter for letter, breath for breath, in all the multiverse, crossing without damage the attraction and translation of multiple black holes and vertiginous wormholes?
The path before us is infinitely, obviously, open.
We only know that at the very end there will be life – not death.
What kind of life? We don’t know.
We know that with life, there will also be truth.
Truth and life are indissolubly linked, as are transcendence and immanence.
« What is truth? » asked Pilatus once, famously.
One could also ask : « What is life? »
Since transcendence is so infinitely above the human mind, how can one dare to ask even these kinds of questions?
That’s exactly the point.
Daring to ask these questions is already, in a way, beginning to answer them.
I have no doubt that in six hundred million years, or thirty-three billion years, some truth will still be there to be grasp, – if there are still, of course, eyes to see, or ears to hear.
_________________
iFranz Rosenzweig. The Star of Redemption. Alexandre Derczanski and Jean-Louis Schlegel, Seuil , 1882, p.474.
iiFranz Rosenzweig. The Star of Redemption. Alexandre Derczanski and Jean-Louis Schlegel, Seuil , 1882, p.474.
iiiFranz Rosenzweig. The Star of Redemption. Alexandre Derczanski and Jean-Louis Schlegel, Seuil , 1882, p.478.
ivFranz Rosenzweig. The Star of Redemption. Alexandre Derczanski and Jean-Louis Schlegel, Seuil , 1882, p.476.
vFranz Rosenzweig. The Star of Redemption. Alexandre Derczanski and Jean-Louis Schlegel, Seuil , 1882, p.479-480.
viFranz Rosenzweig. The Star of Redemption. Alexandre Derczanski and Jean-Louis Schlegel, Seuil, 1882, p. 490.
There are two words in Hebrew for the idea of filiation : ben בן and bar בר.
These two words mean « son », but with very different shades of nuances, due to their respective roots. Their etymologies open surprising perspectives…
The word ben comes from the verb banah בָּנָה, « to build, to construct, to found, to form », which connotes the idea of a progressive emergence, an edification, a construction, necessarily taking a certain amount of time.
The word bar comes from the verb bara‘ בָּרַא, « to create, to draw from nothing, to give birth » and in a second sense « to choose ». The idea of filiation is here associated with a timeless or instantaneous creation, that may be congruent with a divine origin. Thus the verb bara’ is used in the first verse of Genesis, Berechit bara’ Elohim . « In the beginning created God… ».
In a figurative sense, bar alsomeans « chosen, preferred », connotating choice, election or dilection.
What does the difference between ben and bar teach us?
There is a first level of reading: with bar, the idea of filiation begins with a ‘creation’, appearing from nothingness (bara’), but with ben, it rather implies a long work of ‘construction’, and ‘foundation’ (banah).
On the one hand, bar evokes the atemporality (or timelessness) of a transcendence (coming from nothingness), and by opposition, ben implies the necessary temporality of immanence.
In the biblical text, these words, (banah and bara’, ben and bar) so common, so familiar, are like two opposite doors, opening on very different paths.
Doors, or rather trapdoors, under which profound abysses are revealed.
Let’s start with creation. Berechit bara’.
The word bar has its own depth, its subtle ambiguities. Its primary meaning is ‘son‘, but it may mean son of man, son of Elohim, or son of the Gods.
« What! My son! What! Son of my guts! « (Prov. 31:2)
The Book of Daniel uses the expression בַר-אֱלָהִין , bar-elohim, literally« son of the Gods » (Dan 3:25). In this case, bar-elohim refers to an « angel ».
But bar seems to be able to also mean « Son of God ».The psalmist exclaims, « Worship the Lord with fear » (Ps 2:11), and immediately afterwards David cries out, « Nachku bar », « Kiss the Son » (Ps 2:12).
Who is this ‘Son’ (bar) to be kissed or embraced ? He indeed has a special status, since he is refered to by David, just after the name YHVH, and in the same elan of praise.
According to some, this ‘Son’ is to be understood as ‘the king’, and according to others, it refers to ‘purity’.
Why the ‘king’? Why ‘purity’?
Because bar comes from the verb bara’, one of whose original meanings is « to choose ». Bar also means ‘chosen, elected, preferred’.
In Psalm 2, the word bar may well mean the ‘Chosen One’, the ‘Anointed’ (mashiah, or ‘messiah’) of the Lord.
By derivation, bar also means ‘pure, serene, spotless’, as in bar-levav, ‘pure in heart’ (Ps. 24:4) or ‘the commandments of YHVH are pure (bara)’ (Ps. 19:9).
So, what does ‘nachqou bar’ really mean ? « Kiss the Son », « kiss the king », « kiss the Chosen One », « kiss the Anointed One », « kiss the Messiah », or even « embrace purity »?
Who will tell?
Let us note here that Christians could interpret this particular bar (in Ps 2:12)asa prefiguration of Christ (the name ‘Christ’ comes from the Greek christos which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word mashiah, ‘anointed’).
As for ben, like I said, this noun derives from the verb banah, thatwe find used in various ways (to build, to form, to found):
« I built this house for you to live in. « (1 Kings 8:13)
« The Lord God formed a woman from the rib. « (Gen 2:22)
« By building your high places » (Ez 16:31).
« He founded Nineveh » (Gn 10:11).
Solomon played with the word and its ambivalence (to build/ a son), as he made his speech for the inauguration of the Temple. He recalled that it was indeed David’s idea to build (banah) a temple in honor of God, but that the Lord had said to him, « Yet it is not you who will build (tibneh) this temple, it is your son (bin or ben), he who is to be born of you, who will build (ibneh) this temple inmy honor. « (1 Kings 8:19)
Solomon was to be the son (ben) who would build (ibneh) the Temple.
Noah also built an altar (Gen 8:20). Here too, one can detect a play on words with even deeper implications than those associated with the construction of the Temple.
« What does ‘Noah built’ mean? In truth Noah is the righteous man. He ‘built an altar’, that’s the Shekhina. His edification (binyam) is a son (ben), who is the Central Column. » i
The interpretation is not obvious, but if one believes a good specialist, one can understand this:
« The Righteous One ‘builds’ the Shekhina because He connects it to the Central Column of the divine pleroma, the Sefira Tiferet, called ‘son’. This masculine sefira is the way by which the Shekhina receives the ontic influx that constitutes her being. »ii
The Kabbalah uses the image of the union of the masculine (the Central Column) and feminine (the Abode) to signify the role of the Just in the ‘construction’ of the Divine Presence (the Shekhina).
« The Righteous One is the equivalent of the sefira Yessod (the Foundation) represented by the male sexual organ. Acting as the ‘righteous’, the man assumes a function in sympathy with this divine emanation, which connects the male and female dimensions of the Sefirot, allowing him to ‘build’ the Shekhina identified at the altar. » iii
Ben. Son. Construction. Column. Male organ.
And from there, the possible theurgic action of the righteous man, ‘edifying’ the Shekhina.
We see that bar and ben offer two paths linking the divine and the human. One path (bar) is a descending one, that of choice, of election, of the Anointed One, of the Messiah.
The other path (ben) rises like a column in the temple, like a work of righteousness, erected upright, toward the Shekhina.
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iZohar Hadach, Tiqounim Hadachim. Ed. Margaliot, Jerusalem, 1978, fol. 117C cited by Charles Mopsik. The great texts of the cabal. Verdier. Lagrasse 1993, p. 591
iiCharles Mopsik. The great texts of the cabal. Verdier. Lagrasse 1993, p. 591
iiiCharles Mopsik. The great texts of the cabal. Verdier. Lagrasse 1993, p. 593
The theurgic, creative power of men has always manifested itself through the ages.
Religious anthropology bears witness to this.
« No doubt, without the Gods, men could not live. But on the other hand, the Gods would die if they were not worshipped (…) What the worshipper really gives to his God is not the food he puts on the altar, nor the blood that flows from his veins: that is his thought. Between the deity and his worshippers there is an exchange of good offices which condition each other. »i
The Vedic sacrifice is one of the most ancient human rite from which derives the essence of Prajāpati, the supreme God, the Creator of the worlds.
« There are rites without gods, and there are rites from which gods derive ».ii
Unexpectingly, Charles Mopsik, in his study of the Jewish kabbalah, subtitled TheRites that Make God, affirms the « flagrant similarity » of these ancient theurgical beliefs with the Jewish motif of the creative power of the rite.
Mopsik readily admits that « the existence of a theme in Judaism, according to which man must ‘make God’, may seem incredible.»iii
Examples of Jewish kabbalistic theurgy abound, involving, for example, man’s ‘shaping’ of God, or his participation in the ‘creation’ of the Name or the Shabbath. Mopsik evokes a midrash quoted by R. Bahya ben Acher, according to which « the man who keeps the Shabbath from below, ‘it is as if he were doing it from above’, in other words ‘gave existence’, ‘fashioned the Sabbath from above. »iv
The expression ‘to make God’, which Charles Mopsik uses in the subtitle of his book, can be compared to the expression ‘to make the Shabbath’ (in the sense of ‘to create the Shabbath’) as it is curiously expressed in the Torah (« The sons of Israel will keep the Shabbath to make the Shabbath » (Ex 31,16)), as well as in the Clementine Homilies, aJudeo-Christian text that presents God as the Shabbath par excellencev, which implies that ‘to make the Shabbath’ is ‘to make God’…
Since its very ancient ‘magical’ origins, theurgy implies a direct relationship between ‘saying’ and ‘doing’ or ‘making’. The Kabbalah takes up this idea, and develops it:
« You must know that the commandment is a light, and he who does it below affirms (ma’amid) and does (‘osseh) that which isabove. Therefore, when man practices a commandment, that commandment is light.»vi
In this quotation, the word ‘light’ is to be understood as an allusive way of saying ‘God’, comments Mopsik, who adds: « Observances have a sui generis efficacy and shape the God of the man who puts them into practice.»
Many other rabbis, such as Moses de Leon (the author of the Zohar), Joseph Gikatila, Joseph of Hamadan, Méir ibn Gabbay, or Joseph Caro, affirm the power of « the theurgic instituting action » or « theo-poietic ».
The Zohar explains :
« ‘If you follow my ordinances, if you keep my commandments, when you do them, etc.' ». (Lev 26:3) What does ‘When you do them’ mean? Since the text already says, « If you follow and keep, » what is the meaning of « When you do them »? Verily, whoever does the commandments of the Torah and walks in its ways, so to speak, it is as if he makes Him on high (‘avyd leyh le’ila), the Holy One blessed be He who says, ‘It is as if he makes Me’ (‘assa-ny). In this connection Rabbi Simeon said, ‘David made the Name’. » vii
« David made the Name » ! This is yet another theurgical expression, and not the least, since the Name, the Holy Name, is in reality God Himself !
‘Making God’, ‘Making the Shabbath’, ‘Making the Name’, all these theurgic expressions are equivalent, and the authors of the Kabbalah adopt them alternately.
From a critical point of view, it remains to be seen whether the kabbalistic interpretations of these theurgies are in any case semantically and grammatically acceptable. It also remains to be ascertained whether they are not rather the result of deliberately tendentious readings, purposefully diverting the obvious meaning of the Texts. But even if this were precisely the case, there would still remain the stubborn, inescapable fact that the Jewish Kabbalists wanted to find the theurgic idea in the Torah .
Given the importance of what is at stake, it is worth delving deeper into the meaning of the expression « Making the Name », and the way in which the Kabbalists understood it, – and then commented on it again and again over the centuries …
The original occurrence of this particular expression is found in the second book of Samuel (II Sam 8,13). It is a particularly warlike verse, whose usual translation gives a factual, neutral interpretation, very far in truth from the theurgic interpretation:
« When he returned from defeating Syria, David again made a name for himself by defeating eighteen thousand men in the Valley of Salt. »
David « made a name for himself », i.e. a « reputation », a « glory », in the usual sense of the word שֵׁם, chem.
The massoretic text of this verse gives :
וַיַּעַשׂ דָּוִד, שֵׁם
Va ya’ass Daoud shem
« To make a name for oneself, a reputation » seems to be the correct translation, in the context of a warlord’s glorious victory. Biblical Hebrew dictionaries confirm that this meaning is widespread.
Yet this was not the interpretation chosen by the Kabbalists.
They prefer to read: « David made the Name« , i.e. « made God« , as Rabbi Simeon says, quoted by the Zohar.
In this context, Charles Mopsik proposes a perfectly extraordinary interpretation of the expression « making God ». This interpretation (taken from the Zohar) is that « to make God » is equivalent to the fact that God constitutes His divine fullness by conjugating (in the original sense of the word!) « His masculine and feminine dimensions ».
If we follow Mopsik, « making God » for the Zohar would be the equivalent of « making love » for both male and female parts of God?
More precisely, as we will see, it would be the idea of YHVH’s loving encounter with His alter ego, Adonaï?
A brilliant idea, – or an absolute scandal (from the point of view of Jewish ‘monotheism’)?
Here’s how Charles Mopsik puts it:
« The ‘Holy Name’ is defined as the close union of the two polar powers of the divine pleroma, masculine and feminine: the sefira Tiferet (Beauty) and the sefira Malkhut (Royalty), to which the words Law and Right refer (…) The theo-poietic action is accomplished through the unifying action of the practice of the commandments that cause the junction of the sefirot Tiferet and Malkhut, the Male and Female from Above. These are thus united ‘one to the other’, the ‘Holy Name’ which represents the integrity of the divine pleroma in its two great poles YHVH (the sefira Tiferet) and Adonay (the sefira Malkhut). For the Zohar, ‘To make God’ therefore means to constitute the divine fullness [or pleroma] by uniting its masculine and feminine dimensions. » viii
In another passage of the Zohar, it is the (loving) conjunction of God with the Shekhina, which is proposed as an equivalence or ‘explanation’ of the expressions « making God » or « making the Name »:
« Rabbi Judah reports a verse: ‘It is time to act for YHVH, they have violated the Torah’ (Ps.119,126). What does ‘the time to act for YHVH’ mean? (…) ‘Time’ refers to the Community of Israel (the Shekhinah), as it is said: ‘He does not enter the sanctuary at all times’ (Lev 16:2). Why [is it called] ‘time’? Because there is a ‘time’ and a moment for all things, to draw near, to be enlightened, to unite as it should be, as it is written: ‘And I pray to you, YHVH, the favourable time’ (Ps 69:14), ‘to act for YHVH’ [‘to make YHVH’] as it is written: ‘David made the Name’ (II Sam 8:13), for whoever devotes himself to the Torah, it is as if he were making and repairing the ‘Time’ [the Shekhinah], to join him to the Holy One blessed be He. » ix
After « making God », « making YHVH », « making the Name », here is another theurgical form: « making Time », that is to say « bringing together » the Holy One blessed be He and the Shekhina…
A midrach quoted by R. Abraham ben Ḥananel de Esquira teaches this word attributed to God Himself: « Whoever fulfills My commandments, I count him as if they had made Me. » x
Mopsik notes here that the meaning of the word ‘theurgy’ as ‘production of the divine’, as given for example in the Liturgy, may therefore mean ‘procreation’, as a model for all the works that are supposed to ‘make God’. xi
This idea is confirmed by the famous Rabbi Menahem Recanati: « The Name has commanded each one of us to write a book of the Torah for himself; the hidden secret is this: it is as if he is making the Name, blessed be He, and all the Torah is the names of the Saint, blessed be He. » xii
In another text, Rabbi Recanati brings together the two formulations ‘to make YHVH’ and ‘to make Me’: « Our masters have said, ‘Whoever does My commandments, I will count him worthy as if he were making Me,’ as it is written, ‘It is time to make YHVH’ (Ps 119:126)xiii.
One can see it, tirelessly, century after century, the rabbis report and repeat the same verse of the psalms, interpreted in a very specific way, relying blindly on its ‘authority’ to dare to formulate dizzying speculations… like the idea of the ‘procreation’ of the divinity, or of its ‘begetting’, in itself and by itself….
The kabbalistic image of ‘procreation’ is actually used by the Zohar to translate the relationship of the Shekhina with the divine pleroma:
« ‘Noah built an altar’ (Gen 8:20). What does ‘Noah built’ mean? In truth, Noah is the righteous man. He ‘built an altar’, that is the Shekhina. His edification (binyam) is a son (ben) who is the Central Column. » xiv
Mopsik specifies that the ‘righteous’ is « the equivalent of the sefira Yessod (the Foundation) represented by the male sexual organ. Acting as ‘righteous’, the man assumes a function in sympathy with that of this divine emanation, which connects the male and female dimensions of the sefirot, allowing him to ‘build’ the Shekhina identified at the altar. » xv
In this Genesis verse, we see that the Zohar reads the presence of the Shekhina, represented by the altar of sacrifice, and embodying the feminine part of the divine, and we see that the Zohar also reads the act of « edifying » her, symbolized by the Central Column, that is to say by the ‘Foundation’, or the Yessod, which in the Kabbalah has as its image the male sexual organ, and which thus incarnates the male part of the divine, and bears the name of ‘son’ [of God]…
How can we understand these allusive images? To say it without a veil, the kabbalah does not hesitate to represent here (in a cryptic way) a quasi-marital scene where God ‘gets closer’ to His Queen to love her…
And it is up to ‘Israel’ to ensure the smooth running of this loving encounter, as the following passage indicates:
» ‘They will make me a sanctuary and I will dwell among you’ (Ex 25:8) (…) The Holy One blessed be He asked Israel to bring the Queen called ‘Sanctuary’ to Him (…) For it is written: ‘You shall bring a fire (ichêh, a fire = ichah, a woman) to YHVH’ (Lev 23:8). Therefore it is written, ‘They will make me a sanctuary and I will dwell among you’. » xvi
Let’s take an interested look at the verse: « You will approach a fire from YHVH » (Lev 33:8).
The Hebrew text gives :
וְהִקְרַבְתֶּם אִשֶּׁה לַיהוָה
Ve-hiqravttêm ichêh la-YHVH
The word אִשֶּׁה , ichêh, means ‘fire’, but in a very slightly different vocalization, ichah, this same word means ‘woman’. As for the verb ‘to approach’, its root is קרב, qaraba, « to be near, to approach, to move towards » and in the hiphilform, « to present, to offer, to sacrifice ». Interestingly, and even disturbingly, the noun qorban, ‘sacrifice, oblation, gift’ that derives from it, is almost identical to the noun qerben which means ‘womb, entrails, breast’ (of the woman).
One could propose the following equations (or analogies), which the Hebrew language either shows or implies allusively:
Fire = Woman
Approaching = Sacrifice = Entrails (of the woman)
‘Approaching the altar’ = ‘Approaching a woman’ (Do we need to recall here that, in the Hebrew Bible, « to approach a woman » is a euphemism for « making love »?)
The imagination of the Kabbalists does not hesitate to evoke together (in an almost subliminal way) the ‘sacrifice’, the ‘entrails’, the ‘fire’ and the ‘woman’ and to bring them formally ‘closer’ to the Most Holy Name: YHVH.
It should be noted, however, that the Kabbalists’ audacity is only relative here, since the Song of Songs had, long before the Kabbalah, dared to take on even more burning images.
In the thinking of the Kabbalists, the expression « to make God » is understood as the result of a « union » of the masculine and feminine dimensions of the divine.
In this allegory, the sefira Yessod connects God and the Community of believers just as the male organ connects the male body to the female body. xvii
« ‘Time to make YHVH’ (Ps 119:126). Explanation: The Shekhinah called ‘Time’ is to be made by joining her to YHVH after she has been separated from Him because one has broken the rules and transgressed the Law. » xviii
For his part, Rabbi Joseph Caro (1488-1575) understood the same verse as follows: « To join the upper pleroma, masculine and divine, with the lower pleroma, feminine and archangelical, must be the aim of those who practice the commandments (…) The lower pleroma is the Shekhinah, also called the Community of Israel ». xix
It is a question of magnifying the role of the Community of Israel, or that of each individual believer, in the ‘divine work’, in its ‘reparation’, in its increase in ‘power’ or even in its ‘begetting’….
Rabbi Hayim Vital, a contemporary of Joseph Caro, comments on a verse from Isaiah and relates it to another verse from the Psalms in a way that has been judged « extravagant » by literalist exegetesxx.
Isaiah’s verse (Is 49:4) reads, according to R. Hayim Vital: « My work is my God », and he compares it with Psalm 68: « Give power to God » (Ps 68:35), of which he gives the following comment: « My work was my God Himself, God whom I worked, whom I made, whom I repaired ».
Note that this verse (Is 49:4) is usually translated as follows: « My reward is with my God » (ou-féoulati êt Adonaï).
Mopsik comments: « It is not ‘God’ who is the object of the believer’s work, or action, but ‘my God’, that God who is ‘mine’, with whom I have a personal relationship, and in whom I have faith, and who is ‘my’ work. »
And he concludes that this ‘God who is made’, who is ‘worked’, is in reality ‘the feminine aspect of the divinity’.
The Gaon Elijah of Vilna proposed yet another way of understanding and designating the two ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ aspects of the Deity, calling them respectively ‘expansive aspect’ and ‘receiving aspect’:
« The expansive aspect is called havayah (being) [i.e. HVYH, anagram of YHVH…], the receiving aspect of the glorification coming from us is called ‘His Name’. In the measure of Israel’s attachment to God, praising and glorifying Him, the Shekhinah receives the Good of the expanding aspect. (…) The Totality of the offices, praise and glorification, that is called Shekhinah, which is His Name. Indeed, ‘name’ means ‘public renown’ and ‘celebration’ of His Glory, the perception of His Greatness. (…) This is the secret of ‘YHVH is one, and His Name is one’ (Zac 14:9). YHVH is one’ refers to the expansion of His will. ‘His Name is one’ designates the receiving aspect of His praise and attachment. This is the unification of the recitation of the Shema.» xxi
According to the Gaon of Vilna, the feminine dimension of God, the Shekhina, is the passive dimension of the manifested God, a dimension that is nourished by the Totality of the praises and glorifications of the believers. The masculine dimension of God is Havayah, the Being.
Charles Mopsik’s presentation on the theurgical interpretations of the Jewish Kabbalah (‘Making God’) does not neglect to recognize that these interpretations are in fact part of a universal history of the religious fact, particularly rich in comparable experiences, especially in the diverse world of ‘paganism’. It is thus necessary to recognize the existence of « homologies that are difficult to dispute between the theurgic conceptions of Hellenized Egyptian hermeticism, late Greco-Roman Neoplatonism, Sufi theology, Neoplatonism and Jewish mystagogy. » xxii
Said in direct terms, this amounts to noting that since the dawn of time, there has been among all ‘pagan’ people this idea that the existence of God depends on men, at least to a certain degree.
It is also striking that ideas seemingly quite foreign to the Jewish religion, such as the idea of a Trinitarian conception of God (notoriously associated with Christianity) has in fact been enunciated in a similar way by some high-flying cabbalists.
Thus the famous Rabbi Moses Hayim Luzzatto had this formula surprisingly comparable (or if one prefers: ‘isomorphic’) to the Trinitarian formula:
« The Holy One, Blessed be He, the Torah and Israel are one. »
But it should also be recalled that this kind of « kabbalistic » conception has attracted virulent criticism within conservative Judaism, criticism which extends to the entire Jewish Kabbalah. Mopsik cites in this connection the outraged reactions of such personalities as Rabbi Elie del Medigo (c. 1460- 1493) or Rabbi Judah Arie of Modena (17th century), and those of equally critical contemporaries such as Gershom Scholem or Martin Buber…
We will not enter into this debate. We prefer here to try to perceive in the theurgic conceptions we have just outlined the clue of an anthropological constant, an archetype, a kind of universal intuition proper to the profound nature of the human spirit.
It is necessary to pay tribute to the revolutionary effort of the Kabbalists, who have shaken with all their might the narrow frames of old and fixed conceptions, in an attempt to answer ever-renewed questions about the essence of the relationship between divinity, the world and humanity, the theos, the cosmos and the anthropos.
This titanic intellectual effort of the Jewish Kabbalah is, moreover, comparable in intensity, it seems to me, to similar efforts made in other religions (such as those of a Thomas Aquinas within the framework of Christianity, around the same period, or those of the great Vedic thinkers, as witnessed by the profound Brahmanas, two millennia before our era).
From the powerful effort of the Kabbalah emerges a specifically Jewish idea of universal value:
« The revealed God is the result of the Law, rather than the origin of the Law. This God is not posed at the Beginning, but proceeds from an interaction between the superabundant flow emanating from the Infinite and the active presence of Man. » xxiii
In a very concise and perhaps more relevant way: « You can’t really know God without acting on Him, » also says Mopsik.
Unlike Gershom Scholem or Martin Buber, who have classified the Kabbalah as « magic » in order to disdain it at its core, Charles Mopsik clearly perceives that it is one of the signs of the infinite richness of human potential in its relationship with the divine. We must pay homage to him for his very broad anthropological vision of the phenomena linked to divine revelation, in all eras and throughout the world.
The spirit blows where it wants. Since the dawn of time, i.e. for tens of thousands of years (the caves of Lascaux or Chauvet bear witness to this), many human minds have tried to explore the unspeakable, without preconceived ideas, and against all a priori constraints.
Closer to us, in the 9th century AD, in Ireland, John Scot Erigenes wrote:
« Because in all that is, the divine nature appears, while by itself it is invisible, it is not incongruous to say that it is made. » xxiv
Two centuries later, the Sufi Ibn Arabi, born in Murcia, died in Damascus, cried out: « If He gave us life and existence through His being, I also give Him life, knowing Him in my heart.» xxv
Theurgy is a timeless idea, with unimaginable implications, and today, unfortunately, this profound idea seems almost incomprehensible in our almost completely de-divinized world.
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iE. Durckheim. Elementary forms of religious life. PUF, 1990, p.494-495
iiE. Durckheim. Elementary forms of religious life. PUF, 1990, p. 49
iiiCharles Mopsik. The great texts of the cabal. The rites that make God. Ed. Verdier. Lagrasse, 1993, p.551
vClementine Homilies, cf. Homily XVII. Verdier 1991, p.324
viR. Ezra de Girona. Liqouté Chikhehah ou-féah. Ferrara, 1556, fol 17b-18a, cited in Charles Mopsik. The great texts of the cabal. The rites that make God. Ed. Verdier. Lagrasse, 1993, p.558
viiiCharles Mopsik. The great texts of the cabal. The rites that make God. Ed. Verdier. Lagrasse, 1993, p.561-563.
ixZohar, I, 116b, cited in Charles Mopsik. The great texts of the cabal. The rites which make God. Ed. Verdier. Lagrasse, 1993, p.568
xR. Abraham ben Ḥananel de Esquira. Sefer Yessod ‘Olam. Ms Moscow-Günzburg 607 Fol 69b, cited in Charles Mopsik. The great texts of the cabal. The rites that make God. Ed. Verdier. Lagrasse, 1993, p.589
xiSee Charles Mopsik. The great texts of the cabal. The rites that make God. Ed. Verdier. Lagrasse, 1993, p.591
xiiR. Menahem Recanati. Perouch ‘al ha-Torah. Jerusalem, 1971, fol 23b-c, quoted in Charles Mopsik. The great texts of the cabal. The rites which make God. Ed. Verdier. Lagrasse, 1993, p.591
xiiiR. Menahem Recanati. Sefer Ta’amé ha-Mitsvot. London 1962 p.47, cited in Charles Mopsik. The great texts of the cabal. The rites which make God. Ed. Verdier. Lagrasse, 1993, p.591
xivZohar Hadach, Tiqounim Hadachim. Ed. Margaliot. Jerusalem, 1978, fol 117c quoted in Charles Mopsik. The great texts of the cabal. The rites which make God. Ed. Verdier. Lagrasse, 1993, p.591
xvCharles Mopsik. The great texts of the cabal. The rites that make God. Ed. Verdier. Lagrasse, 1993, p.593
xviR. Joseph de Hamadan. Sefer Tashak. Ed J. Zwelling U.M.I. 1975, p.454-455, cited in Charles Mopsik. The great texts of the cabal. The rites which make God. Ed. Verdier. Lagrasse, 1993, p.593
xviiSee Charles Mopsik. The great texts of the cabal. The rites that make God. Ed. Verdier. Lagrasse, 1993, p. 604
xviiiR. Matthias Délacroute. Commentary on the Cha’aré Orah. Fol 19b note 3. Quoted in Charles Mopsik. The great texts of the cabal. The rites which make God. Ed. Verdier. Lagrasse, 1993, p. 604
xixCharles Mopsik. The great texts of the cabal. The rites that make God. Ed. Verdier. Lagrasse, 1993, p. 604
xxiGaon Elijah of Vilna. Liqouté ha-Gra. Tefilat Chaharit, Sidour ha-Gra, Jerusalem 1971 p.89, cited in Charles Mopsik. The great texts of the cabal. The rites which make God. Ed. Verdier. Lagrasse, 1993, p. 610
xxiiCharles Mopsik. The great texts of the cabal. The rites that make God. Ed. Verdier. Lagrasse, 1993, p. 630
xxiiiCharles Mopsik. The great texts of the cabal. The rites that make God. Ed. Verdier. Lagrasse, 1993, p. 639
xxivJean Scot Erigène. De Divisione Naturae. I,453-454B, quoted by Ch. Mopsik, Ibid. p.627
Words are devious. Language is treacherous, and grammars are vicious. Willingly ignorant of these deficiencies, men have been sailing for millennia in oceans of sentences, drifting above the depths of meanings, equipped with broken compasses, falsified sextants, under the fleeting stars.
How accurately, then, can men understand a « divine revelation » when it is made of « words », clothed in their unfathomable depths, their ambiguous abysses?
Error lurks for the wise. The study never ends. Who can pretend to grasp the ultimate meaning of any revelation?
Let us start with a single verse of the Psalms, which opened worlds of interpretation, during millenia.
« It is time to make YHVH » (Ps. 119:126).
« Making YHVH? » Really? Yes, this is the meaning that some Jewish Kabbalists, in Medieval Spain, decided was the true sense conveyed by Ps. 119:126.
Most versions of the Bible, today, give more ‘rational’ translations of Ps. 119:126, such as:
Why then, did some medieval rabbis, most of them Kabbalists, chose to deviate from the obvious, traditional meaning carried by the Massoretic text? Why did they dare to flirt with scandal? Were they not aware that they were shocking the Jewish faith, or even just simple common sense, by pretending to « make » YHVH?
Many centuries before the Jewish Kabbalists tried their wits on this particular verse, manuscripts (and interpretations) already differed greatly about its true meaning.
The obvious meaning was indeed: « It is time for God to act ».
Other interpretations prefered : « It is time to act for God », – i.e. men should finally do for God what they had to do.
Has the time come (for the LORD) to act, or has the time come (for men) to act for the LORD?
Forsaking these two possible (and indeed differing) readings, the Kabbalists in early medieval Spain chose yet another interpretation: « It is time [for men] to make God. » iii
Why this audacity, rubbing shoulders with blasphemy, shaving the abyss?
The Hebrew Bible, in the Massoretic version which was developed after the destruction of the Second Temple, and which therefore dates from the first centuries of our era, proposes the following text:
עֵת, לַעֲשׂוֹת לַיהוָה
‘èt la’assot la-YHVH
This can be translated as: « It is time to act for God », if one understands לַיהוָה = for YHVH
But the Kabbalists refused this reading. They seem not to have used the Massoretic text, but other, much older manuscripts which omit the preposition for (לַ).
The word ‘God’ (or more precisely יהוָה, ‘YHVH’) thus becomes the direct object complement of the verb ‘to do, to act’. Hence the translation : ‘It is time to make God’.
The Bible of the French Rabbinate follows the Massoretic version and translates :
« The time has come to act for the Lord ».
The Jerusalem Bible (Ed. Cerf, 1973) translates: « It is time to act, Yahweh ».
In this interpretation, the Psalmist seems to somehow admonish YHVH and gives Him a pressing request to « act ». The translators of the Jerusalem Bible note that the Massoretic text indicates « for Yahweh », which would imply that it is up to man to act for Him. But they do not retain this lesson, and they mention another handwritten (unspecified) source, which seems to have been adopted by S. Jerome, a source which differs from the Massoretic text by the elision of the preposition ל. Hence the adopted translation: « It is time to act, Yahweh », without the word for.
But, again, the lessons vary, depending on how you understand the grammatical role of the word ‘Yahweh’…
S. Jerome’s version (the Vulgate) gives :
Tempus is ut facias Domine.
The word ‘Lord’ is in the vocative (‘Domine!’): the Psalmist calls upon the Lord to ask Him to act. « It is time for You to act, Lord! »
However, in the text of the Clementine Vulgate, finalized in the 16th century by Pope Clement VIII, and which is the basis of the ‘New Vulgate’ (Nova Vulgata) available online on the Vatican website, it reads:
Tempus faciendi Domino
The word ‘Lord’ is in the dative (‘Domino’), and thus plays the role of a complement of attribution. « It is time to act for the Lord ».
The Septuagint (that is, the version of the Bible translated into Greek by seventy-two Jewish scholars gathered in Alexandria around 270 B.C.E.) proposes, for its part
καιρὸς τοῦ ποιῆσαι τῷ κυρίῳ-
Kairos tou poïêsai tô kyriô
Here too the word ‘Lord’ is in the dative, not in the vocative. « It is time to act for the Lord ».
This ancient lesson of the Septuagint (established well before the Massoretic text) does not, however, resolve a residual ambiguity.
One can indeed choose to emphasize the need to act, which is imparted to the Lord Himself:
« For the Lord, the time to act has come ».
But one can just as easily choose to emphasize the need for men to act for the Lord:
« The time has come to act for the Lord ».
In relation to these different nuances, what I’d like to emphasize here is the radically different understanding chosen by the Kabbalists in medieval Spain:
« It is time to make God ».
Rabbi Meir Ibn Gabbay wrote:
« He who fulfills all the commandments, his image and likeness are perfect, and he is like the High Man sitting on the Throne (Ez. 1:26), he is in his image, and the Shekhinah is established with him because he has made all his organs perfect: his body becomes a throne and a dwelling for the figure that corresponds to him. From there you will understand the secret of the verse: « It is time to make YHVH » (Ps. 119:126). You will also understand that the Torah has a living soul (…) It has matter and form, body and soul (…) And know that the soul of the Torah is the Shekhinah, the secret of the last he [ה ], the Torah is its garment (…) The Torah is therefore a body for the Shekhinah, and the Shekhinah is like a soul for her. » iv
Charles Mopsik notes that « this expression [« making God »], roughly stated, can surprise and even scandalize ».
At least, this is an opportunity to question the practices and conceptions of the Jewish Kabbalah in matters of ‘theurgy’.
The word ‘theurgy’ comes from the Latin theurgia, « theurgy, magic operation, evocation of spirits », itself borrowed by Augustine from the Greek θεουργία , « act of divine power », « miracle », « magic operation ». E. des Places defines theurgy as « a kind of binding action on the gods ». In Neoplatonism, « theurgy » means « the act of making God act in oneself », according to the Littré.
E. R. Dodds devotes an appendix of his work The Greeks and the Irrationalvto the theurgy, which he introduces as follows: « The theologoi ‘spoke of the gods’, but [the theourgos] ‘acted upon them’, or perhaps even ‘created them' », this last formula being an allusion to the formula of the famous Byzantine scholar Michel Psellus (11th century): « He who possesses the theurgic virtue is called ‘father of the gods’, because he transforms men into gods (theous all anthropous ergazetai). » vi
In this context, E.R. Dodd cites Jamblichus’ treatise De mysteriis, which he considers ‘irrational’ and a testimony to a ‘culture in decline’: « De mysteriis is a manifesto of irrationalism, an affirmation that the way to salvation is not in human reason but in ritual. It is not thought that links theurgists to the gods: what else would prevent philosophical theorists from enjoying the theurgical union? But this is not the case. Theurgic union is achieved only by the efficacy of ineffable acts performed in the proper way, acts that are beyond understanding, and by the power of ineffable symbols that are understood only by gods… without intellectual effort on our part, signs (sunthêmata) by their own virtue perform their own work’ (De myst. 96.13 Parthey). To the discouraged spirit of the pagans of the fourth century such a message brought seductive comfort. « vii
But the result of these attitudes, privileging ‘rite’ over ‘intellectual effort,’ was « a declining culture, and the slow thrust of that Christian athéotês whoall too obviously undermined the very life of Hellenism. Just as vulgar magic is commonly the last resort of the desperate individual, of those who have been lacking in both man and God, so theurgy became the refuge of a desperate ‘intelligentsia’ that already felt the fascination of the abyss. » viii
The modes of operation of the theurgy vary notoriously, covering a vast domain, from magical rites or divination rites to shamanic trances or phenomena of demonic or spiritual ‘possession’.
E.R. Dodds proposes to group them into two main types: those that depend on the use of symbols (symbola) or signs (sunthêmata), and those that require the use of a ‘medium’, in ecstasy. The first type was known as telestikê, and was mainly used for the consecration and animation of magical statues in order to obtain oracles. The making of magical statuettes of gods was not a ‘monopoly of theurgists’. It was based on an ancient and widespread belief of a universal sympatheiaix, linking the images to their original model. The original center of these practices was Egypt.
Dodds cites Hermes Trismegistus’ dialogue with Asclepius (or Aesculapius), which evokes « animated statues, full of meaning and spirit » (statuas animatas sensu et spiritu plenas), which can predict the future, inflict or cure diseases, and imprison the souls of deer or angels, all the theurgic actions summarized by Hermes Trismegistus’ formula: sic deorum fictor est homo, (« this is how man makes gods »)x.
« To make gods »: this expression was there to prefigure, with more than a thousand years of anteriority, the formula put forward later by R. Meir ibn Gabbay and other Kabbalists: « to make YHVH », – although undoubtedly with a different intention. We shall return to this.
In his book The City of God, S. Augustinexi had quoted large excerpts from this famous dialogue between Hermes Trismegistus and Asclepius, including these sentences:
« As the Lord and the Father, God in a word, is the author of the heavenly gods, so man is the author of those gods who reside in temples and delight in the neighborhood of mortals. Thus, humanity, faithful to the memory of its nature and origin, perseveres in this imitation of its divinity. The Father and the Lord made the eternal gods in his likeness, and humanity made its gods in the likeness of man. » xii
And Hermes added: « It is a marvel above all wonder and admiration that man could invent and create a divinity. The disbelief of our ancestors was lost in deep errors about the existence and condition of the gods, forsaking the worship and honors of the true God; thus they found the art of making gods. »
The anger of St. Augustine exploded at this very spot against Hermes. « I don’t know if the demons themselves would confess as much as this man! »
After a long deconstruction of the Hermetic discourse, Augustine concludes by quoting a definitive sentence of the prophet Jeremiah:
« Man makes himself gods (elohim)? No, of course, they are not gods (elohim)! » xiii
Attempting to combat the « sarcasm » of Christian criticism, Jamblichus strove to prove that « idols are divine and filled with the divine presence. « xiv
This art of making divine statues had to survive the end of the « dying pagan world » and find its way into « the repertoire of medieval magicians, » Dodds notesxv.
One could add, without seeing any malice in it, that the idea was also taken up by the Spanish Jewish cabal in the Middle Ages, and later still, by the rabbis who made Golem, such as the Maharal of Prague, nicknamed Yehudah-Leib, or Rabbi Loew…
This is at least the suggestion proposed by E.R. Dodds: « Did the theurgical telestikê suggest to medieval alchemists their attempts to create artificial human beings (« homunculi« )? (…) Curious clues to some historical relationship have recently been put forward by Paul Kraus. (…) He points out that the vast alchemical corpus attributed to Jâbir b. Hayyan (Gebir) not only alludes to Porphyry’s (apocryphal?) Book of the Generation, but also uses neo-Platonic speculations about images. » xvi
The other operational mode of theurgy is trance or mediumnic possession, of which Dodds notes « the obvious analogy with modern spiritism. xvii
I don’t know if the « modern spiritism » that Dodds spoke of in the 1950s is not a little outdated today, but it is certain that the rites of trance and possession, whether they are practiced in Morocco (the Gnaouas), Haiti (Voodoo), Nepal, Mongolia, Mexico, and everywhere else in the world, are still worth studying. One can consult in this respect the beautiful study of Bertrand Hell, Possession and Shamanismxviii, whose cover page quotes the superb answer of the Great Mughal Khan Güyük to Pope Innocent IV in 1246: « For if man is not himself the strength of God, what could he do in this world? »
Many are the skeptics, who doubt the very reality of the trance. The famous Sufi philosopher al-Ghazali, in his 12th century Book of the Proper Use of Hearing and Ecstasy, admits the possibility of « feigned » ecstasy, but he adds that deliberately provoking one’s « rapture » when participating in a cult of possession (dikhr) can nevertheless lead the initiate to a true encounter with the divine. xix
Bertrand Hell argues that simulations and deceptions about ecstasy can open up a fertile field of reflection, as evidenced by the concepts of « para-sincerity » (Jean Poirier), « lived theater » (Michel Leiris) or « true hallucination » (Jean Duvignaud). xx
In the definitions and examples of theurgies we have just gone through, it is a question of « making the divinity act » in itself, or « acting » on the divinity, and much more exceptionally of « creating » it. The only examples of a theurgy that « creates gods » are those evoked by Hermes Trismegistus, who speaks of man as the « maker of gods » (fictor deorum), and by Michel Psellus, with the somewhat allegorical sense of a theurgy that exercises itself on men to « transform them into gods ».
This is why Charles Mopsik’s project to study the notion of theurgy as it was developed in the Jewish cabal has a particularly original character. In this case, in fact, theurgy does not only mean « to make the god act upon man », or « to act upon the god » or « to make man divine », but it takes on the much more absolute, much more radical, and almost blasphemous meaning, particularly from a Jewish point of view, of « creating God », of « making God »xxi.
There is a definite semantic and symbolic leap here. Mopsik does not hesitate to propose this leap in the understanding of theurgy, because it was precisely the radical choice of the Spanish Jewish Kabbalah, for several centuries…
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iAccording to the Masoretic Text and the JPS 1917 Edition.
iiiCf. the long and learned study devoted to this last interpretation by Charles Mopsik. The great texts of the cabal. The rites that make God. Ed. Verdier. Lagrasse, 1993
ivR. Méir Ibn Gabbay. Derekh Emounah. Jerusalem, 1967, p.30-31, cited in Charles Mopsik. The great texts of the cabal. The rites that make God. Ed. Verdier. Lagrasse, 1993, p. 371-372.
vE.R. Dodds. The Greeks and the irrational. Flammarion, 1977, p.279-299
viMichel Psellus. Greek patrology. 122, 721D, « Theurgicam virtutem qui habet pater divinus appellatur, quoniam enim ex hominibus facit deos, illo venit nomine. »
viiE.R. Dodds. The Greeks and the irrational. Flammarion, 1977, p.284.
viiiE.R. Dodds. The Greeks and the irrational. Flammarion, 1977, p.284.
ixE.R. Dodds. The Greeks and the irrational. Flammarion, 1977, p.289
xAsclepius III, 24a, 37a-38a. Corpus Hermeticum. Trad. A.J. Festugière. t. II. Les Belles Lettres. Paris, 1973, p.349, quoted by E.R. Dodds. The Greeks and the irrational. Flammarion, 1977, p.291.
The Jews, fierce defenders of the monotheistic idea, are also the faithful guardians of texts in which appear, on several occasions, what could be called ‘verbal trinities’, or ‘triple names’ of God, such as: « YHVH Elohenou YHVH » (Deut 6:4), « Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh » (Ex 3:14), or « Kadosh Kadosh Kadosh « , expressed as a triple attribute of YHVH (Is 6:3).
The Zohar commented upon the first of these three-part names, « YHVH Elohenou YHVH », making a link with the « divine secret » embedded in the first sentence of the Torah: « Until now, this has been the secret of ‘YHVH Elohim YHVH’. These three names correspond to the divine secret contained in the verse ‘In the beginning created Elohim’. Thus, the expression ‘In the beginning’ is an ancient secret, namely: Wisdom (Hokhmah) is called ‘Beginning’. The word ‘created’ also alludes to a hidden secret, from which everything develops. » (Zohar 1:15b).
One could conclude that the One God does not therefore exclude a ‘Trinitarian’ phenomenology of His essential nature, which may be expressed in the words that designate Him, or in the names by which He calls Himself….
Among the strangest ‘triplets’ of divine names that the One God uses to name Himself is the expression, « I, I, Him », first mentioned by Moses (Deut 32:39), then repeated several times by Isaiah (Is 43:10; Is 43:25; Is 51:12; Is 52:6).
In Hebrew: אֲנִי אֲנִי הוּא ani ani hu’, « I, I, Him ».
These three pronouns are preceded by an invitation from God to ‘see’ who He is:
רְאוּ עַתָּה, כִּי אֲנִי הוּא
reou ‘attah, ki ani ani hu’.
Literally: « See now that: I, I, Him ».
This sentence is immediately followed by a reaffirmation of God’s singularity:
וְאֵין אֱלֹהִים, עִמָּדִי
v’éin elohim ‘imadi
« And there is no god (elohim) with Me ».
Throughout history, translators have endeavored to interpret this succession of three personal pronouns with various solutions.
The Septuagint chose to translate (in Greek) this triplet as a simple affirmation by God of his existence (ego eimi, « I am »), and transformed the original doubling of the personal pronoun in the first person singular (ani ani, « I I ») into a repetition of the initial imperative of the verb ‘to see’, which is used only once in the original text:
ἴδετε ἴδετε ὅτι ἐγώ εἰμι
idete, idete, oti ego eimi
« See, see, that I am ».
On the other hand, the third person singular pronoun disappears from the Greek translation.
The second part of the verse gives :
καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν θεὸς πλὴν ἐμοῦ-
kai ouk estin theos plén emou.
« and there is no God but Me. »
In the translation of the French Rabbinate adapted to Rashi’s commentary, one reads:
« See now, it is Me, I, I am Him, no god beside Me! »
We see that « ani ani hu’ » is translated as « It is Me, I, I am Him ».
Rashi comments on this verse as follows:
« SEE NOW. Understand by the chastisement with which I have struck you and no one could save you, and by the salvation I will grant you and no one can stop Me. – IT IS ME, I, I AM HIM. I to lower and I to raise. – NO GOD, BESIDE ME. Rises up against Me to oppose Me. עִמָּדִי: My equal, My fellow man. » i
Let’s try to comment on Rashi’s comment.
Rashi sees two « I’s » in God, an « I » that lowers and an « I » that raises.
The ‘I’ that lowers seems to be found in the statement ‘It is Me’.
The ‘I’ that raises is the ‘I’ as understood in the formula ‘I am Him’.
Rashi distinguishes between a first ani, who is the ‘I’ who lowers and punishes, and a second ani who is an ‘I’ who ‘raises’ and who is also a hu’, a ‘Him’, that is to say an ‘Other’ than ‘I’.
We infer that Rashi clearly supports the idea that there are two « I’s » in God, one of which is also a « Him », or that there are two « I’s » and one « Him » in Him…
As for the formula v’éin elohim ‘imadi (‘no god beside Me’, or ‘no god with Me’), Rashi understands it as meaning : ‘no god [who is my equal] is against me’.
Let us note that Rashi’s interpretation does not exclude a priori that God has an equal or similar God ‘with him’ or ‘beside him’, but that it only means that God does not have a God [similar or equal] ‘against him’.
In the translation of the so-called « Rabbinate Bible » (1899), the three pronouns are rendered in such a way as to affirm the emphasis on God’s solitary existence:
« Recognize now that I am God, I alone, and there is no God (Elohim) beside me! » ii
In this translation, note that the personal pronoun in the 3rd person singular (hu’) has completely disappeared. There is, however, a repeated affirmation of God’s ‘loneliness’ (‘I alone’, and ‘no God beside me’).
This translation by the French Rabbinate raises several questions.
Why has the expression ani hu’, « I Him », been translated by a periphrase (« it is I who am God, I alone »), introducing the words « God », « am » and « alone », not present in the original, while obliterating the pronoun hu’, « He »?
On the other hand, there is the question of the meaning of the 2nd part of the verse: if there is « no Elohim » beside God, then how to interpret the numerous biblical verses which precisely associate, side by side, YHVH and Elohim?
How can we understand, for example, the fact that in the second chapter of Genesis we find the expression יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים , YHVH Elohim, onnumerous occasions, if, as Deuteronomy states, that there is no Elohim « beside » YHVH?
Some elements of clarity may be gained from Isaiah’s use of the same curious expression.
Is 43,10 : כִּי-אֲנִי הוּא ki ani hu’, ‘that I Him’
Is 43, 11: אָנֹכִי אָנֹכִי, יְהוָה anokhi anokhi YHVH, ‘I, I, YHVH’
Is 43, 25: אָנֹכִי אָנֹכִי הוּא anokhi anokhi hu’, ‘I, I, Him’
Is 51,12 : אָנֹכִי אָנֹכִי הוּא anokhi anokhi hu‘, ‘I, I, Him’
Is 52,6 : כִּי-אֲנִי-הוּא הַמְדַבֵּר הִנֵּנִי ki ani hu’ hamdaber hinnéni, ‘that I, He, I speak, there’, sometimes translated as ‘that I who speak, I am there’.
In the light of these various verses, the personal pronoun hu’, ‘He’ can be interpreted as playing the role of a relative pronoun, ‘Him’.
But why should this personal pronoun in the 3rd person singular, hu’, « He », this pronoun which God calls Himself, somehow descend from a grammatical level, and become a relative pronoun, simply to comply with the requirement of grammatical clarity ?
In this context, it is necessary to preserve the difficulty and face it head on.
God, through the voice of Moses and Isaiah, calls Himself « I I He ».
What lesson can we get out of it?
First we can see the idea that God carries within His intrinsic unity a kind of hidden Trinity, here translated grammatically by a double « I » followed by a « He ».
Another interpretation, could be to read ‘I I He’ as the equivalent of the Trinity ‘Father Son Spirit’.
One could also understand, considering that the verb tobe is implicitly contained in the personal pronouns ani and hu’, inaccordance with Hebrew grammar: « I, [I am] an ‘I’ [who is] a ‘Him’ « .
In this reading, God defines Himself as an I whose essence is to be an Other I, or an Him.
As confirmed by His name revealed to Moses « Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh » (Ex 3:14), God is an I that is always in the process of becoming, according to the grammatical use of the imperfect in Ehyeh, ‘I will be’.
One learns from that that God is always in potentia. He always is the One who will be Other than who He is.
Never static. Always alive and becoming. The One who is the Other.
I know : that sounds pretty unacceptable for the general theological opinion.
But grammatically, this interpretation stands up.
More importantly, it is faithful to the letter of the Torah.
__________________
iThe Pentateuch, accompanied by Rachi’s commentary. Volume V. Deuteronomy. Translated by Joseph Bloch, Israël Salzer, Elie Munk, Ernest Gugenheim. Ed. S. and O. Foundation. Lévy. Paris, 1991, p. 227
Two years before his own death, C.G. Jung evoked as a strong possibility the prospect of the « definitive destruction » of the « Christian myth ».
However, psychology could still help « saving » this myth. Through a better understanding of mythology and its role in intrapsychic processes, « it would be possible to arrive at a new understanding of the Christian myth, and especially of its apparently shocking and unreasonable statements. If the Christian myth is not finally to become obsolete, which would mean a liquidation of unpredictable scope, the idea of a more psychologically oriented interpretation is necessary to save the meaning and content of the myth. The danger of definitive destruction is considerable. » i
Christianity, from the beginning, had already been considered « scandal for the Jews and folly for the Greeks »ii. Now, it had even become « shocking » and « unreasonable » for the Swiss and « obsolete » for psychologists.
The fall in religious vocations, the desertion of the faithful and the decline of the denarius were already beginning to be felt at the end of the 1950s of the last century. All this seemed to give some consistency to these Jungian prophecies of the « destruction » and « liquidation » of the « Christian myth » as a logical consequence of its supposed « obsolescence ».
The movement of disaffection with Christianity has not stopped growing over the last six decades, one might add, at least if we look at the indicators already mentioned.
Is the « Christian myth », to use Jung’s expression, now dying, or even « dead »?
And if so, can it still be « resurrected »?
And if it could indeed be resurrected, in what form, and for what purpose?
Like a Saint George slaying the dragon of obsolescence, an obsolescence less flamboyant than sneaky, silent, but swallowing credence, Jung brandishes in his time the victorious spear of psychology, the only one capable, according to him, of reviving the Christian myth.
To understand Jung’s idea of the assimilation of Christianity to a « myth » – and to a myth in the process of becoming obsolete, one must return to what underlies his entire understanding of the world, the existence of the unconscious, and the « creative » character of the psyche.
For Jung, any « representation » is necessarily « psychic ». « When we declare that something exists, it is because we necessarily have a representation of it (…) and ‘representation’ is a psychic act. Nowadays, however, ‘only psychic’ simply means ‘nothing’. Apart from psychology, only contemporary physics has had to recognize that no science can be practiced without the psyche. » iii
This last assertion seems to allude to the opinion of the Copenhagen Schooliv, hard fought by Einstein et al., but an opinion to which the latest conceptual and experimental developments seem to be giving reason today.
Despite such assurances, at the highest theoretical and experimental level of contemporary science, and despite the flattering successes of analytical psychology, C.G. Jung, while at the peak of his brilliant career, seemed bitter about having to fight again and again against the outdated cliché (typical of modern times) that « only psychic » means « nothing ».
No doubt cruelly wounded in the depths of his soul, C.G. Jung may have wanted to take a terrible revenge, by showing that this « nothing » can still, and in a short time, put down one of the most important foundations of European, and even world civilization…
The unconscious exists, it is a certainty for Jung, and for many people. But few have understood the immense power, almost divine, or even divine at all, of this entity.
« No one has noticed, » explains Jung, « that without a reflexive psyche, there is virtually no world, that therefore consciousness represents a second creator, and that cosmogonic myths do not describe the absolute beginning of the world, but rather the birth of consciousness as a second creator ». v
Before Jung: In the beginning God created the earth, etc.
After Jung: The Unconscious Mind created the idea that « God created the earth etc. ».
Myths correspond to psychic developments. They can grow and die, just like the latter. « The archetypes all have a life of their own that unfolds according to a biological model. » vi
This metaphor of the « biological model » must be taken literally, including birth, maturity and death.
« A myth is still a myth, even if some consider it to be the literal revelation of an eternal truth; but it is doomed to death if the living truth it contains ceases to be an object of faith. It is necessary, therefore, to renew one’s life from time to time through reinterpretation. Today Christianity is weakened by the distance that separates it from the spirit of the times, which is changing (…). It needs to re-establish the union or relationship with the atomic age, which represents an unprecedented novelty in history. The myth needs to be told anew in a new spiritual language ». vii
All the nuances of the biological model can be subsumed under a much broader concept of life, a much more global power of meaning, including in particular the idea of resurrection (– an idea, it will be recalled, « scandalous », « crazy » and « shocking »).
If we apply the idea of resurrection in particular to the Christian myth itself, it is possible that the latter in fact escapes its natural, « biological » destiny and its inevitable death, provided that it is subjected to a total « renovation », to an unprecedented reinterpretation, a sine qua non condition for its « resurrection« .
The idea of the « resurrection » of a myth incarnated by a dead Savior, and whose apostles based their faith on the certainty of his own resurrection (as Paul reminds us), is not lacking in salt.
But in order to taste this salt, it would be necessary to be able to reinterpret the resurrection of Christ under the species of a new « resurrection », which is more in accordance with the spirit of the (atomic) time.
The idea of an ‘atomic’ zeitgeist was probably obvious to a psychologist living in the 1950s, after Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the rise of nuclear winter threats made tangible by Cold War arsenals.
Nowadays, the ‘spirit of the time’ of our time is a little less ‘atomic’, it seems, and more ‘climatic’ or ‘planetary’. It is inclined to let itself be influenced by new global threats, those towards which global warming and the foreseeable extinction of entire sections of the biosphere are pointing.
In this new context, what does it mean to « renovate » or « resurrect » the Christian myth of the « resurrection » (as distinct, for example, from the myths of the resurrection of Osiris or Dionysus)?
A first response would be to apply it (quite literally) to the putative resurrection of the millions of animal and plant species now extinct.
But would the idea of an « ecological » Christianity, relying for its own rebirth on the effective resurrection of billions of insects or amphibians, be enough to bring the faithful back to the parishes and to resurrect vocations?
This is doubtful.
It is not that we should not strive to bring back to life the dead species, if this is still humanly (or divinely?) possible. The modern myth that is being constituted before our eyes lets us imagine that one day a few traces of DNA will be enough to recreate disappeared worlds.
Such a re-creation by a few future learned priests, packed into their white coats and their spiritual laboratories, would then in itself be a kind of miracle, capable of melting the hardest, most closed hearts.
But one can also assume that this would still be insufficient to extricate the « Christian myth » from its spiral of obsolescence, in which accumulated millennia seem to lock it up.
But what? Will the resurrection of an immense quantity of fauna and flora, abolished from the surface of the globe, not be like a sort of living symbol of the resurrection of a Savior who died two thousand years ago?
Wouldn’t that be enough to announce to the world, urbi et orbi, that the very idea of resurrection is not dead, but alive again?
No, that would not be enough, one must argue with regret.
How can the resurrection of only half of the Earth’s biodiversity be weighed against the resurrection of the one universal Messiah?
The bids are going up, we can see it.
If Jung is right, the majority of humanity can no longer believe in the very myth of salvation and resurrection (as embodied by Christ in history two thousand years ago).
Why is that? Because this Messiah seems too dated, too local, too Galilean, too Nazarene even.
The story of that Messiah no longer lives on as before.
Why is that? The spirit of the times « has changed ».
And it is not the tales of the agony of the world’s fauna and flora, however moving they may be, that will be able to « convert » minds deprived of any cosmic perspective, and even more so of eschatological vision, to the call of a « renewed » Christian myth.
In the best of cases, the rescue and (momentary?) resurrection of half or even nine-tenths of the Anthropocene could never be more than a short beep on the radar of the long times.
We no longer live in Roman Judea. To be audible today, it would take a little more than the multiplication of a few loaves of bread, the walking on still waters or the resurrection of two or three comatose people; it would even take much more than the resurrection (adapted to the spirit of the time) of a Son of Man, a Son of God, both descended into Hell and ascended into Heaven.
After Season 1, which apparently ended with a sharply declining audience, Christianity’s Season 2, if it is to attract a resolutely planetary audience, must start again on a basis that is surprising for the imagination and fascinating for the intellect.
Reason and faith must be truly overwhelmed, seized, petrified with stupor, and then transported with « enthusiasm » by the new perspectives that want to open up, that must open up.
So one has to change words, worlds, times and perspectives.
The little Galilea must now compete with nebulous Galaxies.
The resurrected Carpenter must square black holes, plane universal constants and sweep away dark energy, like a simple cosmic sawdust.
The once dead Messiah must now truly live again before us, and at once tear all the veils, – the veils of all Temples, of all Ages, of all spirits, in all times, whether in the depths of galactic superclusters, or in the heart of quarks.
Quite an extensive program. But not unfeasable.
_______________________
iLetter from C.G. Jung to Pastor Tanner Kronbühl (February 12, 1959). In C.G. Jung. The Divine in Man. 1999. p.136
« The Lord sent death upon Jacob and it came upon Israel. » (Isaiah 9:7)
Death, really? Upon Jacob? And upon Israel? Sent by the Lord Himself ?
The word « death » is in fact used in this verse in the famous translation of the Septuagint, made around 270 B.C. by seventy Jewish scholars in Alexandria at the request of Ptolemy II. The Septuagint (noted LXX) uses the Greek word θάνατον, thanaton, which means « death ».
But in other translations, disregarding this catastrophic lesson of the LXX, Isaiah’s verse is translated much more neutrally as « word ».i
The Jerusalem Bible gives thus: « The Lord hath cast a word into Jacob, it is fallen upon Israel. »
In the original version, Hebrew uses the word דָּבָר , davar, whose primary meaning is « word ».
The dictionary also tells that this same word, דָּבָר , davar, can mean « plague » or « death », as in Exodus 9:3: « A very strong plague » or « a very deadly plague ». Here, the LXX gives θάνατος μέγας, « a great death ». In Hosea 13:14 the word davar means « plagues ».
If the noun דָּבָר , davar, carries this astonishing duality of meaning, the verb דָּבַר , davara, confirms it by adding a nuance of excess. Davara means « to speak, to say; to speak evil, to speak against », but also « to destroy, to exterminate ».
It seems that in Hebrew the sphere of meanings attached to davar and davara is not only potentially full of threats or (verbal) aggression, as in Numbers 12:1 (« Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses ») or in Ps 78:19 (« They spoke against God »), but also full of potential, fatal and deadly action, as in II Chr 22:10 (« She wiped out the whole royal race ») or in Ps 2:5 (« In his wrath he will destroy their mighty ones »).
Davar. Word. Plague. Death.
Davara. To speak. To exterminate.
Such ambivalence, so radical, implies that one can really decide on the meaning, – « word » or « extermination » ? – only by analyzing the broader context in which the word is used.
For example, in the case of Isaiah’s verse: « The Lord sent death upon Jacob and it came upon Israel », it is important to emphasize that the prophet continues to make terrible predictions, even darker:
« The Lord will raise up against them the enemies of Rezin. And he will arm their enemies. Aram on the east, the Philistines on the west, and they will devour Israel with full mouths » (Isaiah 9:10-11).
« So YHVH cut off from Israel head and tail, palm and rush, in one day » (Isaiah 9:13).
« By the wrath of YHVH Sabaoth the earth has been burned and the people are like the prey of fire » (Isaiah 9:18).
The context here clearly gives weight to an interpretation of davar as « death » and « extermination » and not simply as « word ».
The lesson in LXX appears to be correct and faithful to the intended meaning.
Another question then arises.
Is this use of the word davar in Isaiah unique in its kind?
Another prophet, Ezekiel, also reported terrible threats from God against Israel.
« I will make you a desolation, a derision among the nations that are round about you, in the sight of all who pass by » (Ez 5:14).
« I will act in you as I have never acted before and as I will never act again, because of all your abominations » (Ez 5:9).
« You shall be a mockery and a reproach, an example and a stupefaction to the nations around you, when I shall do justice from you in anger and wrath, with furious punishments. I, YHVH, have said » (Ez 5:15).
« And I will put the dead bodies of the Israelites before their filthiness, and I will scatter their bones around your altars. Wherever you dwell, the cities shall be destroyed and the high places laid waste » (Ez 6:5).
We find in Ezekiel the word davar used in the sense of « plague » or « pestilence »:
« Thus says the Lord YHVH: Clap your hands, clap your feet and say, ‘Alas,’ over all the abominations of the house of Israel, which will fall by the sword, by famine and by pestilence (davar). He who is far away will die by the pestilence (davar). He who is near shall fall by the sword. That which has been preserved and spared will starve, for I will quench my fury against them » (Ez 6:11-12).
God is not joking. Davar is not « only » a plague. It is the prospect of an extermination, an annihilation, the final end.
« Thus says the Lord YHVH to the land of Israel: Finished! The end is coming on the four corners of the land. It is now the end for you. I will let go of my anger against you to judge you according to your conduct. (…) Thus says the Lord YHVH: Behold, evil is coming, one evil. The end is coming, the end is coming, it is awakening towards you, and behold, it is coming » (Ez 7:2-5).
Faced with this accumulation of threats of exterminating the people of Israel uttered by the Lord YHVH, an even deeper question arises.
Why does a God who created the worlds, and who has « chosen » Israel, decide to send « death », threatening to ensure the « end » of His Chosen People?
There is a question of simple logic that arises.
Why does an omnipotent and all-knowing God create a world and people that seem, in retrospect, so evil, so perverse, so corrupt, that He decides to send a word of extermination?
If God is omniscient, He should always have known that His creation would eventually provoke His unquenchable fury, shouldn’t he?
If He is omnipotent, why did He not immediately make Israel a people sufficiently satisfying in His eyes to at least avoid the pain of having to send death and extermination a few centuries later?
This is in fact a question that goes beyond the question of the relationship between God and Israel, but touches on the larger problem of the relationship between God and His Creation.
Why is a « Creator »-God also led to become, afterwards, an « Exterminator »-God ?
Why can the « Word » of God mean « Creation », then also mean « Extermination »?
There are only two possible answers.
Either God is indeed omniscient and omnipotent, and then He is necessarily also cruel and perverse, as revealed by His intention to exterminate a people He has (knowingly) created « evil » and « corrupt » so that He can then « exterminate » them.
Either God is not omniscient and He is not omnipotent. But how come ? A possible interpretation is that He renounced, in creating the world, a part of His omniscience and omnipotence. He made a kind of « sacrifice », the sacrifice of His omnipotence and omniscience.
He made this sacrifice in order to raise His creatures to His own level, giving them real freedom, a freedom that in some strange way escapes divine « science » and « knowledge ».
Let us note that this sort of sacrifice was already a deep intuition of the Veda, as represented by the initial, primal, sacrifice of Prajāpati, the supreme God, the Lord of Creatures.
But why does a supreme God, the Creator of the Worlds, decide to sacrifice His omnipotence and omniscience for creatures who, as we can see, end up behaving in such a way that this supreme God, having somehow fallen back to earth, must resolve to send them « death » and promise them the « end »?
There is only one explanation, in my humble opinion.
It is that the Whole [i.e. God + Cosmos + Humanity] is in a mysterious way, more profound, more abysmal, and in a sense infinitely more « divine » than the divinity of a God alone, a God without Cosmos and without Anthropos.
Only the sacrifice of God, the sacrifice of God as not being anymore the sole « Being », in spite of all the risks abundantly described by Isaiah or Ezekiel, makes possible an « increase » of His own divinity, which He will then share with His Creation, and Humankind.
This is a fascinating line of research. It implies that Humanity has a shared but also « divine » responsibility about the future of the world, and to begin with, about the future of this small planet.
________________
iThis debate over the meaning to be given to davar in this particular verse has been the subject of many commentaries. Théodoret de Cyr notes: « It should be noted that the other interpreters have said that it is a « word » and not « death » that has been sent. Nevertheless, their interpretation does not offer any disagreement: they gave the name of « word » to the decision to punish. « Basil adopts λόγον (« word »), and proposes another interpretation than Theodoret: it would be the Divine Word sent to the poorest, symbolized by Jacob. Cyril also gives λόγον, but ends up with the same conculsion as Theodoret: the « word » as the announcement of punishment. See Theodoret of Cyr, Commentaries on Isaiah. Translated by Jean-Noël Guinot. Ed. Cerf. 1982, p.13
Although they belong to very distant planets, Paul Valéry and Franz Kafka have at least one thing in common. Both had the honor of a celebration of their respective birthday and anniversary by Walter Benjamini .
Why did Benjamin want to give to such different writers such a symbolic tribute?
He was sensitive, I believe, to the fact that they both sought to formulate a kind of a « negative theology » in their work.
For Valéry, this negative theology is embodied in the figure of Monsieur Teste.
Benjamin explains: « Mr. Teste is a personification of the intellect that reminds us a lot of the God that Nicholas of Cusa’s negative theology deals with. All that one can suppose to know about Teste leads to negation. » ii
Kafka, for his part, « has not always escaped the temptations of mysticism »iii according to Benjamin, who quotes Soma Morgenstern on this subject: « There reigns in Kafka, as in all founders of religion, a village atmosphere»iv.
Strange and deliberately provocative sentence, which Benjamin immediately rejects after quoting it: « Kafka also wrote parables, but he was not a founder of religion.» v
Kafka indeed was not a Moses or a Jesus.
But was he at least a little bit of a prophet, or could he pass for the gyrovague apostle of an obscure religion, working modern souls in the depths?
Can we follow Willy Haas who decided to read Kafka’s entire work through a theological prism? « In his great novel TheCastle, Kafka represented the higher power, the reign of grace; in his no less great novel TheTrial, he represented the lower power, the reign of judgment and damnation. In a third novel, America, he tried to represent, according to a strict equalization, the earth between these two powers … earthly destiny and its difficult demands.»vi
Kafka, painter of the three worlds, the upper, the lower and the in-between?
W. Haas’ opinion also seems « untenable » in Benjamin’s eyes. He is irritated when Haas specifies: « Kafka proceeds […] from Kierkegaard as well as from Pascal, one can well call him the only legitimate descendant of these two thinkers. We find in all three of them the same basic religious theme, cruel and inflexible: man is always wrong before God.»vii
Kafka, – a Judeo-Jansenist thinker?
« No » said Benjamin, the wrathful guardian of the Kafkaesque Temple. But he does not specify how Haas’s interpretation would be at fault.
Could it be that man is always wrong, but not necessarily « before God »? Then in front of whom? In front of himself?
Or would it be that man is not always « wrong », and therefore sometimes right, in front of a Count Westwestviii?
Or could it be that man is really neither right nor wrong, and that God himself is neither wrong nor right about him, because He is already dead, or indifferent, or absent?
One cannot say. Walter Benjamin does not give the definitive answer, the official interpretation of what Kafka thought about these difficult questions. In order to shed light on what seems to be the Kafkaesque position, Benjamin is content to rely on a « fragment of conversation » reported by Max Brod :
« I remember an interview with Kafka where we started from the current Europe and the decline of humanity. We are, he said, nihilistic thoughts, ideas of suicide, which are born in the mind of God. This word immediately reminded me of the Gnostic worldview. But he protested: ‘No, our world is simply an act of bad humor on the part of God, on a bad day’. I replied: ‘So apart from this form in which the world appears to us, there would be hope…’ He smiled: ‘Oh, enough hope, an infinite amount of hope – but not for us’. »ix
Would God then have suicidal thoughts, for example like Stefan Zweig in Petropolis twenty years later, in 1942? But unlike Zweig, God doesn’t seem to have actually « committed suicide », or if He did, it was only by proxy, through men, in some way.
There is yet another interpretation to consider: God could have only « contracted » Himself, as the Kabbalah of Isaac Luria formulates it (with concept of tsimtsum), or « hollowed out » Himself, according to Paul’s expression (concept of kenosis).
Since we are reduced to the imaginary exegesis of a writer who was not a « founder of religion », can we assume the probability that every word that falls out of Franz Kafka’s mouth really counts as revealed speech, that all the tropes or metaphors he has chosen are innocent, and even that what he does not say may have more real weight than what he seems to say?
Kafka indeed did not say that ideas of suicide or nihilistic thoughts born « in the mind of God » actually apply to Himself. These ideas may be born in His mind, but then they live their own lives. And it is men who live and embody these lives, it is men who are (substantially) the nihilistic thoughts or suicidal ideas of God. When God « thinks », His ideas then begin to live without Him, and it is men who live from the life of these ideas of nothingness and death, which God once contemplated in their ‘beginnings’ (bereshit).
Ideas of death, annihilation, self-annihilation, when thought of by God, « live » as absolutely as ideas of eternal life, glory and salvation, – and this despite the contradiction or oxymoron that the abstract idea of a death that « lives » as an idea embodied in real men carries with it.
Thought by God, these ideas of death and nothingness live and take on human form to perpetuate and self-generate.
Is this interpretation of Kafka by himself, as reported by Max Brod, « tenable », or at least not as « untenable » as Willy Haas’ interpretation of his supposed « theology »?
Perhaps it is.
But, as in the long self-reflexive tirades of a K. converted to the immanent metaphysics of the Castle, one could go on and on with the questioning.
Even if it risks being heretical in Benjamin’s eyes!
Perhaps Max Brod did not report with all the desired precision the exact expressions used by Kafka?
Or perhaps Kafka himself did not measure the full significance of the words he uttered in the intimacy of a tête-à-tête with his friend, without suspecting that a century later many of us would be religiously commenting on and interpreting them, like the profound thoughts of a Kabbalist or an eminent jurist of Canon Law?
I don’t know if I myself am a kind of « idea », a « thought » by God, a « suicidal or nihilistic » idea, and if my very existence is due to some divine bad mood.
If I were, I can only note, in the manner of Descartes, that this « idea » does not seem to me particularly clear, vibrant, shining with a thousand fires in me, although it is supposed to have germinated in the spirit of God himself.
I can only observe that my mind, and the ideas it brings to life, still belong to the world of darkness, of twilight, and not to the world of dark night.
It is in this sense that I must clearly separate myself from Paul Valéry, who prophesied:
« Here comes the Twilight of the Vague and the reign of the Inhuman, which will be born of neatness, rigor and purity in human things. »x
Valéry associates (clearly) neatness, rigor and purity with the « Inhuman », – but also, through the logical magic of his metaphor, with the Night.
I may imagine that « the Inhuman » is for Valéry another name of God?
To convince us of this, we can refer to another passage from Tel Quel, in which Valéry admits:
« Our insufficiency of mind is precisely the domain of the powers of chance, gods and destiny. If we had an answer for everything – I mean an exact answer – these powers would not exist.»xi
On the side of the Insufficient Mind, on the side of the Vague and the Twilight, we therefore have « the powers of chance, of gods and of fate », that is to say almost everything that forms the original substance of the world, for most of us.
But on the side of « neatness », « rigor » and « purity », we have « the Inhuman », which will henceforth « reign in human things », for people like Valery.
Farewell to the gods then, they still belonged to the setting evening, which the Latin language properly calls « Occident » (and which the Arabic language calls « Maghreb »).
Now begins the Night, where the Inhuman will reign.
Thank you, Kafka, for the idea of nothingness being born in God and then living in Man.
Thank you, Valery, for the idea of the Inhuman waiting in the Night ahead of us.
In these circumstances, do we need any more prophets ?
____________________
iWalter Benjamin. « Paul Valéry. For his sixtieth birthday ». Œuvres complètes t. II, Gallimard, 2000, pp. 322-329 , and « Franz Kafka. For the tenth anniversary of his death ». Ibid. pp. 410-453
iiWalter Benjamin. « Paul Valéry. For his sixtieth birthday ». Œuvres complètes t. II, Gallimard, 2000, p. 325
iiiWalter Benjamin. « Franz Kafka. On the tenth anniversary of his death ». Ibid. p. 430
ivWalter Benjamin. « Franz Kafka. On the tenth anniversary of his death ». Ibid. p. 432
vWalter Benjamin. « Franz Kafka. On the tenth anniversary of his death ». Ibid. p. 432-433
viW. Haas, op.cit., p.175, quoted by W. Benjamin, in op.cit. p.435
viiW. Haas, op. cit., p. 176, quoted by W. Benjamin, in op. cit. p. 436.
viiiI make here an allusion to Count Westwest who is the master of Kafka’s Castle.
ixMax Brod. Der Dichter Franz Kafka. Die Neue Rundschau, 1921, p. 213. Quoted by W. Benjamin in op. cit. p. 417
xPaul Valéry. As is. « Rumbs ». Œuvres t. II. Paris, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de La Pléiade. 1960, p. 621
xiPaul Valéry. As is. « Rumbs ». Œuvres t. II. Paris, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de La Pléiade. 1960, p. 647
Le verbe hébreu ירד, yarada, est l’un de ces mots paradoxaux, surprenants, mystérieux, de la littérature des Hekhalot (« les Palais »), laquelle traite des ascensions et des descentes célestes. Il a pour premier sens « descendre », et plusieurs sens dérivés : « tomber, déchoir, périr, être ruiné », ou encore « abattre, humilier, précipiter ». Il s’emploie principalement pour décrire les différentes « descentes », « chutes », « déchéances » ou « humiliations » relevant de la condition humaine.
Le paradoxe apparaît lorsque le même verbe sert aussi à décrire les théophanies, qui sont donc en quelque sorte assimilées, par contiguïté, à ce qui pourrait sembler leur exact opposé : la chute, la ruine et la déchéance.
Une succincte collection d’usages de ce mot en fera miroiter le spectre.
« Abram descendit en Égypte »i. « Elle descendit à la fontaine » (Gen. 24,16). « Moïse descendit de la montagne » (Ex. 19,14 ou Ex. 34,29). « Mon bien-aimé est descendu dans son jardin » (Cant. 6,2). « Il descendra comme la pluie sur l’herbe coupée » (Ps. 72,6).
Ce verbe s’emploie aussi métaphoriquement : « Tous fondent en larmes » (Is. 15,5). « Le jour baissait » (Jug. 19,11). « Ceux qui naviguent sur mer » (Ps. 107,23).
Il s’applique à la mort : « Comme ceux qui descendent dans la tombe » (Prov. 1,12). « Qu’ils descendent tout vivants dans le schéol » (Ps. 55,16).
Il peut prendre l’acception de « déchoir » : « Toi, tu décherras toujours plus bas » (Deut. 28,43).
Le plus intéressant pour notre propos est l’application de ce verbe aux théophanies, aux formes d’apparitions divines.
« Le Seigneur descendra à la vue du peuple entier, sur le mont Sinaï » (Ex. 19,11). « La montagne de Sinaï était toute fumante parce que le Seigneur y était descendu au sein de la flamme » (Ex. 18,18). « La colonne de nuée descendait, s’arrêtait à l’entrée de la Tente, et Dieu s’entretenait avec Moïse. » (Ex. 33,9). « Le Seigneur descendit sur la terre, pour voir la ville et la tour » (Gen. 11,5). « Je descendrai et te parlerai, et je retirerai une partie de l’esprit qui est sur toi pour la faire reposer sur eux » (Nb. 1,17). « Il incline les cieux et descend ; sous ses pieds, une brume épaisse » (2 S. 22,10). « Ah ! Puisses-tu déchirer les cieux et descendre ! » (Is. 63,19). « Tu descendis et les montagnes chancelèrent » (Is. 64,2). « L’Éternel Tsébaoth descendra pour guerroyer sur la montagne de Sion et ses hauteurs. » (Is. 31,4)
Dans tous les cas où Dieu descend dans le monde, il garde, notons-le, une certaine hauteur, ou une certaine distance. Il descend juste assez bas pour être « à la vue du peuple », mais pas plus bas. Il descend sur la montagne, mais « au sein d’une flamme ». Il descend vers la Tente, mais reste « dans une nuée ». Il descend des cieux, mais « une brume épaisse » reste sous ses pieds. Il descend vers Moïse, mais seulement à la distance nécessaire pour lui parler. Il descend sur la montagne de Sion, mais reste sur les « hauteurs ».
Qu’est-ce que cela montre ?
Notons d’abord que ce verbe connotant les idées de descente, de chute, de déchéance, de ruine, d’humiliation, peut être appliqué (métaphoriquement) à Dieu. Chacune des théophanies peut s’interpréter, du point de vue, non de l’homme, mais de Dieu, comme une sorte de « descente » et peut-être de « chute ». C’est une idée implicite mais fortement présente.
Ensuite, on a vu que les descentes décrites dans les textes cités impliquent toujours une certaine distance, une réserve. Dieu descend, mais seulement jusqu’à un certain point.
Enfin, l’idée de la descente de Dieu n’est jamais associée à l’idée de sa remontée. On pourrait objecter le cas du rêve de Jacob. Mais alors ce sont « les messagers divins » qui « montaient et descendaient le long de l’échelle » (Gen. 28,12). Quant à lui, « l’Éternel apparaissait au sommet » (Gen. 28,13), fort loin donc d’en descendre.
En revanche, Dieu « descend », d’après de nombreux textes. Mais ces mêmes textes ne disent jamais qu’Il « remonte », après être descendu.
De cela, me semble-t-il, on peut déduire que la transcendance divine s’accommode d’une immanence pérenne, persistante. On pourrait même dire, que transcendance et immanence sont consubstantielles.
Il faut le souligner, la « descente » dans l’immanence implique l’acceptation par le Divin d’une forme de « chute », de « déchéance ». En « descendant » parmi les hommes, le Divin s’humilie, – au sens propre comme au sens figuré.
Le latin en témoigne: Homo. Humus. Et en hébreu, adam, qui est le nom générique de l’homme, avant d’être le nom du premier homme, vient du mot adama, la terre, la glaise, la boue, l’humus.
I’d like to compare here the use of various « grammatical » names of God, in the Veda and in the Zohar.
The idea of a « One » God is extremely old. More than four thousand years ago, long before Abraham left Ur in Chaldea, the One God was already celebrated by nomadic peoples transhumant in Transoxiana to settle in the Indus basin, as attested by the Veda, and then, a few centuries later, by the peoples of ancient Iran, as reported by the sacred texts of the Avesta.
But the strangest thing is that these very diverse peoples, belonging to cultures thousands of years and thousands of miles apart, have called God by the interrogative pronoun. They named God by the name « Who ?» and other grammatical variations.
Even more surprisingly, some three thousand five hundred years after this innovation appeared, the Jewish Kabbalah, in the midst of the European Middle Ages, took up this same idea of using the interrogative pronoun as a Name of God, developed it and commented on it in detail in the Zohar.
It seems that there is rich material for a comparative anthropological approach to various religions celebrating the God named « Who? »
The Vedic priests prayed to the one and supreme God, creator of the worlds, Prajāpati, – the « Lord (pati) of creatures (prajā) ». In the Rig Veda, Prajāpati is referred to as क (Ka, « who »), in hymn 121 of the 10th Mandala.
« In the beginning appears the golden seed of light.
Only He was the born sovereign of the world.
He fills the earth and the sky.
– To ‘Who? »-God will we offer the sacrifice?
He who gives life and strength,
He whose blessing all the gods themselves invoke,
immortality and death are only His shadow!
– To ‘Who? »-God will we offer the sacrifice?
(…)
He whose powerful gaze stretched out over these waters,
Max Müller asserts the pre-eminence of the Veda in the invention of the pronoun « Who » as a name of God: « The Brâhmans did indeed invent the name Ka ofGod. The authors of Brahmaṇas have broken so completely with the past that, forgetting the poetic character of the hymns and the poets’ desire for the unknown God, they have promoted an interrogative pronoun to the rank of deityii.
In the Taittirîya-samhitâiii, the Kaushîtaki-brâhmaṇaiv, the Tâṇdya-brâhmaṇavand the Satapatha-brâhmaṇavi , whenever a verse is presented in interrogative form, the authors say that the pronoun Ka which carries the interrogation designates Prajāpati. All hymns in which the interrogative pronoun Ka was found were called Kadvat, i.e., ‘possessing the kad‘, – or ‘possessing the who?
The Brahmans even formed a new adjective for everything associated with the word Ka. Not only the hymns but also the sacrifices offered to the God Ka were referred to as « Kâya »’vii.
The use of the interrogative pronoun Ka to designate God, far from being a kind of limited rhetorical artifice, had become the equivalent of a theological tradition.
Another question arises. If we know that Ka actually refers to Prajāpati, why use (with its burden of uncertainty) an interrogative pronoun, which seems to indicate that one cannot be satisfied with the expected and known answer?
Further west to the highlands of Iran, and half a millennium before the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt, the Yashts, among the oldest hymns of the Avesta, also proclaim this affirmation of the One God about himself: « Ahmi yat ahmi » (« I am who I am »)viii.
God is named this way in Avestic language through the relative pronoun yat, « who », which is another way of grammatically dealing with the uncertainty of God’s real name.
A millennium before Moses, Zarathushtra asked the one God: « Reveal to me Your Name, O Ahura Mazda, Your highest, best, most just, most powerful Name ».
Then Ahura Mazda answered: « My Name is the One, – and it is in ‘question’, O holy Zarathushtra! « »ix .
The Avestic text literally says: « Frakhshtya nâma ahmi« , which can be translated word for word: « He who is in question (Frakhshtya), as for the name (nâma), I am (ahmi)« . x
Curiously enough, long after the Veda and the Avesta, the Hebrew Bible also gives the One God these same « grammatical » names, « Who » or « He Who ».
We find this use of the interrogative pronoun who (מִי , mi ) in the verse from Isaiahxi: מִי-בָרָא אֵלֶּה (mi bara éleh), « Who created that? ».
As for the relative pronoun « who, whom » (אֲשֶׁר , asher), it is staged in a famous passage from Exodusxii: אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה (ehyeh asher ehyeh), « I am who I am », or more acurately, « I will be who I will be », taking into account the imperfect tense of ‘ehyeh’.
The latter option leaves open the possibility of a future revelation, of another Name yet, or of a divine essence whose essence would have no grammatically formulable essence, but could be rendered only approximately, for example by means of a relative pronoun and a verbal form in the future .
Two millennia after Isaiah, in the midst of the European Middle Ages, the famous book of the Jewish Kabbalah, the Zohar, attributed to Moses de Leon, focused on a detailed study of the name Mi (« Who? ») of God.
One of the tracks that emerges from this interrogation is the intrinsically divine relationship of Mi (Who) to Mâ(What) and to Eleh (That).
« It is written: « In the beginning ». Rabbi Eleazar opened one of his lectures with the following exordium: « Lift up your eyes (Is 40:28) and consider who created this ». « Lift up your eyes up, » to what place? To the place where all eyes are turned. And what is that place? It is the « opening of the eyes ». There you will learn that the mysterious Elder, the eternal object of research, created this. And who is He? – Mi » (= Who). He is the one who is called the « Extremity of Heaven », above, for everything is in his power. And it is because he is the eternal object of research, because he is in a mysterious way and because he does not reveal himself that he is called « Mi » (= Who); and beyond that we must not go deeper. This upper end of the Heaven is called « Mi » (= Who). But there is another end at the bottom, called « Mâ » (= What). What is the difference between the two? The first, mysterious one, called « Mi », is the eternal object of search; and, after man has searched, after he has tried to meditate and to go up from step to step until he reaches the last one, he finally arrives at « Mâ » (= What). What did you learn? What did you understand? What did you look for? Because everything is as mysterious as before. This mystery is alluded to in the words of Scripture: ‘Mâ (= What), I will take you as a witness, Mâ (= What), I will be like you' ». xiii
What are we learning, indeed? What have we understood?
Mi is a Name of God. It is an eternal object of research.
Can it be reached? No.
One can only reach this other noun, which is still only a pronoun, Mâ (= What).
You look for « Who » and you reach « What ».
This Mâis not the sought-after Mi, but of Mâ we can say, as Scripture testifies: « Mâ, I will take you as a witness, Mâ, I will be like you. » xiv
The Zohar indicates indeed:
« When the Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed, a heavenly voice came and said, « Mâ (= What) will give you a testimony, » for I have testified every day from the first days of creation, as it is written, « I take heaven and earth as my witness this day. « And I said, « Mâ will be like you, » that is, He will give you sacred crowns, very much like His own, and make you ruler over the world. » xv
The God whose Name is Mi is not the God whose Name is Mâ, and yet they are one.
And above all, under the Name of Mâ, He will one day be the ‘equal’ of anyone who seeks Him in all things, at least according to the Zohar:
« Just as the sacred people no longer enter the holy walls today, so I promise you that I will not enter my dwelling place above until all the troops have entered your walls below. May this be your consolation, for in this form of « What » (Mâ) I will be your equal in all things. » xvi
The man who ‘seeks’ God is placed between Mi and Mâ, in an intermediate position, just as Jacob was once.
« For Mi, the one who is the upper echelon of the mystery and on whom all depends, will heal you and restore you; Mi, the end of heaven from above, and Mâ, the end of heaven from below. And this is Jacob’s inheritance that forms the link between the upper end Mi and the lower end Mâ, for he stands in the midst of them. This is the meaning of the verse: « Mi (= Who) created that » (Is 40:26). » xvii
But that’s not all. Isaiah’s verse has not yet delivered its full weight of meaning. What does « that » mean?
« Rabbi Simeon says, « Eleazar, what does the word ‘Eleh‘ (= That) mean? It cannot refer to the stars and other heavenly bodies, since they are always seen and since the heavenly bodies are created by « Mâ« , as it is written (Ps 33:6): « By the Word of God the heavens were created. » Neither can it refer to secret objects, since the word « Eleh » can only refer to visible things. This mystery had not yet been revealed to me until the day when, as I stood by the sea, the prophet Elijah appeared to me. He said to me, « Rabbi, do you know the meaning of the words, ‘Who (Mi) created that (Eleh)? «
I answered him, « The word ‘Eleh‘ means the Heavens and the heavenly bodies, and Scripture commands man to contemplate the works of the Holy One, blessed be he, as it is written (Ps 8:4): « When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, etc ». and a little further on (Ibid., 10): « God, our master, how wonderful is your name on all the earth. «
Elijah replied: Rabbi, this word containing a secret was spoken before the Holy One, blessed be He, and its meaning was revealed in the Heavenly School, here it is: When the Mystery of all Mysteries wished to manifest itself, He first created a point, which became the Divine Thought; then He drew all kinds of images on it, engraved all kinds of figures on it, and finally engraved on it the sacred and mysterious lamp, an image representing the most sacred mystery, a profound work coming out of the Divine Thought. But this was only the beginning of the edifice, existing but not yet existing, hidden in the Name, and at that time called itself only « Mi« . Then, wanting to manifest Himself and be called by His Name, God put on a precious and shining garment and created « Eleh » (That), which was added to His Name.
« Eleh« , added to inverted « mi » [i.e. ‘im’], formed « Elohim« . Thus the word « Elohim » did not exist before « Eleh » was created. It is to this mystery that the culprits who worshipped the golden calf alluded when they cried out (Ex 32:4): « Eleh » is your God, O Israel. » xviii
We learn in this passage from the Zohar that the true essence of the golden calf was neither to be a calf nor to be made of gold. The golden calf was only a pretext to designate « that ».
It was only there to designate the essence of « Eleh » (That), the third instanciation of the divine essence, after that of « Mi » and that of « Mâ » …
As the Zohar indicates, this can be deduced by associating the Name « Mi » (Who?) with the Name « Eleh » (That), which allows us to obtain the Name « Elohim » (God), after inverting mi into im, ...
The Name Mi, the Name Mâ and the Name Eleh were not primarily divine nouns, but only pronouns (interrogative, relative, demonstrative).
These divine pronouns, in which lies a powerful part of mystery because of their grammatical nature, also interact between themselves. They refer to each other a part of their deeper meaning. The « Who » calls the « What », and they both also refer to a grammatically immanent « That ».
The grammatical plane of interpretation is rich. But can a more theological reading be attempted? I think so.
These three Divine Names, « Who », « What » and « That », form a kind of proto-trinity, I’d like to suggest.
This proto-trinity evokes three attributes of God:
He is a personal God, since we can ask the question « Who? » about Him.
He is a God who may enter in relation, since relative pronouns (« Whom », « What ») can designate Him.
Finally He is an immanent God, since a demonstrative pronoun (« That ») can evoke Him.
Even if Judaism claims an absolute « unity » of the divine, it cannot help but hatch within itself Trinitarian formulations – here, in grammatical form.
This Trinitarian phenomenology of the divine in Judaism, in the grammatical form it borrows, does not make it any less profound or any less eternally perennial. For if there is indeed an ever-present symbol, always at work, of the original wiring of the human mind, it is grammar…
In a million years, or even in seven hundred million years from now, and whatever idea of the divine will reign then, I guess that there will still be a transhuman or posthuman grammar to evoke the categories of the Who, the What, and the That, and to make them look as aspects or ‘faces’ of the Divine.
vii The word Kâya is used in Taittirîya-samhitâ (I, 8, 3, 1) and Vâgasaneyi-samhitâ (XXIV, 15).
viii Max Müller, Theosophy or Psychological Religion. Ed. Longmans, Green. London, 1895, p.52
ix » My name is the One of whom questions are asked, O Holy Zarathushtra ! ». Quoted by Max Müller, Theosophy or Psychological Religion. Ed. Longmans, Green & Co. London, 1895, p. 55
x Cf. this other translation proposed by Max Müller: « One to be asked by name am I », in Max Müller. Theosophy or Psychological Religion. Longmans, Green & Co. London, 1895, p. 55.
Les peuples, les cultures, les philosophies, les religions, sous l’apparence de leurs multiplicités, de leurs différences, laissent deviner une unité profonde, originaire. Pour la trouver, il faut partir en voyage, comme jadis Pythagore, qui « s’en fut à Babylone, en Égypte, dans toute la Perse, s’instruisant auprès des mages et des prêtres ; on rapporte qu’il s’entendit aussi avec les Brahmanes. »i.
Toujours, où que ce ce soit, les mêmes questions traversent l’esprit des hommes.
« Où est le souffle, le sang, la respiration de la terre ? Qui est allé le demander à qui le sait ? » demande le Ṛg Veda. ii
Mille ans plus tard, un peu plus à l’ouest, YHVH interrogea Job : « Où étais-tu quand je fondai la terre ? Parle, si ton savoir est éclairé. Qui en fixa les mesures, le saurais-tu, ou qui tendit sur elle le cordeau ? (…) Raconte, si tu sais tout cela. De quel côté habite la lumière, et les ténèbres où résident-elles ?»iii
On reconnaît là une familiarité instinctive, une ressemblance de ton.
Dans les Védas, Agni est appelé « Dieu du feu ». Mais ce n’est que l’un de ses noms, et le feu n’est qu’une image. Agni est le Divin sous bien d’autres aspects, que d’autres noms désignent: « Agni, tu es Indra, le dispensateur du bien ; tu es l’adorable Viṣṇu, loué par beaucoup ; tu es Brahmānaspati… tu es toute sagesse. Agni tu es le royal Varuṇa, observateur des vœux sacrés, tu es l’adorable Mitra, le destructeur. »
Agni incarne à la fois la multiplicité innombrable et l’unité du Divin.
La religion des Védas peut sembler polythéiste, par l’accumulation myriadique des noms du Dieu. Mais c’est un monothéisme dans son intuition essentielle.
Les Védas chantent, psalmodient, invoquent et crient le Divin, – sous toutes ses formes. Ce Divin s’incarne toujours dans la Parole, – sous toutes ses formes. « Par le Chant et à côté de lui, il produit le Cri; par le Cri, l’Hymne ; au moyen de la triple invocation, la Parole. »iv
Agni est le Feu divin, qui illumine, il est la libation du Soma, qui crépite. Il est celui-ci, et celui-là, et leur union. Par le sacrifice, le Feu et le Soma s’unissent. Le Feu et le Soma concourent à leur supérieure union, dont Agni est le nom.
Les anciens Hébreux, peuple consacré à l’intuition de l’Un, recherchaient et louaient ses noms divers, tout comme pourrait-on dire, les multiples noms et les attributs védiques de la Divinité célébraient son essence unique.
Dieu « crie » trois fois son nom à l’adresse de Moïse « YHVH, YHVH, EL » (יְהוָה יְהוָה, אֵל)v. Un Dieu unique prononce un triple nom. Que signifie le premier nom YHVH ? Qu’apporte le second nom YHVH ? Qu’exprime le troisième nom, EL ?
Mille années avant Moïse, des versets du Ṛg Veda évoquaient déjà les trois noms divins d’un Dieu unique: « Trois Chevelus brillent à tour de rôle : l’un se sème dans le Saṃvatsara ; l’un considère le Tout au moyen des Puissances ; et d’un autre, on voit la traversée, mais non pas la couleur. »vi
Les trois « Chevelus » représentent le Dieu unique, Agni, dont la chevelure est de flammevii.
Le premier « Chevelu » se sème dans le Soma, en tant que germe primordial, non-né. Le second « Chevelu » considère le Tout grâce au Soma, qui contient les puissances et les forces. Le troisième « Chevelu » est l’être obscur d’Agni (l’Agni « aja », – ce qui signifie « non-né »), obscurité que le Dieu « traverse », lorsqu’il passe de l’obscur au brillant, de la nuit à la lumière.
Agni déploie à trois reprises le feu de sa « chevelure » buissonneuse et brillante, pour signifier sa puissance créatrice, sa sagesse et sa révélation.
De l’intérieur du buisson ardent, Yahvé crie trois fois son nom à Moïse.
Le Dieu « Un » se montre sous « trois » aspects dans le Véda, Il s’appelle Lui-même « trois » fois dans la Torah.
La même métaphore, trine, étrange, lie l’un et le trois. Elle relie l’Inde, Israël, et aussi, par cette présence de l’image trinitaire, l’Occident gréco-latin et chrétien.
Hasard ? Coïncidence ? Le nombre trois paraît désigner une sorte de constante anthropologique, il incarne un archétype, dont la structure profonde dérive de la nature même de l’Un.
Dans La symbolique de l’esprit Jung présente le Trois comme découlant de la tension entre l’Un et l’Autre. « Toute tension d’opposés suscite un déroulement duquel naît le trois. Dans le trois la tension se dénoue, en tant que l’Un perdu réapparaît. L’Un absolu est ‘innombrable’, indéterminable, inconnaissable ; c’est seulement quant il apparaît dans le nombre un qu’il devient connaissable, car ‘l’Autre’ indispensable pour un tel acte fait défaut dans l’état de l’Un. Le trois est donc un déploiement de l’Un qui rend celui-ci connaissable. Le trois est ‘l’Un’ devenu connaissable, qui, s’il ne s’était pas résolu dans l’opposition de ‘l’Un’ et de ‘l’Autre’, serait demeuré dans un état de détermination quelconque. La relation du trois à l’unité peut s’exprimer par un triangle équilatéral : a=b=c, c’est-à-dire par l’identité des trois, le trois étant contenu en totalité dans chacun des trois angles. L’idée intellectuelle du triangle équilatéral est un modèle conceptuel logique de la Trinité. »viii
Un parallèle peut être fait avec la conception chinoise des nombres : « L’Unité ne peut pas valoir Un parce qu’elle est Tout, et d’ailleurs elle ne peut se distinguer de Deux, car c’est en elle que se résorbent tous les aspects contrastants qui s’opposent, mais aussi s’unissent : la Gauche et la Droite, le Haut et le Bas, l’Avant et l’Arrière, le Rond et le Carré, le Yang et le Yin. Tout ensemble Unité et Couple, l’Entier, si on veut lui donner une expression numérique, se trouve dans tous les Impairs, et d’abord dans le 3 (1 plus 2). »ix
Établissant un rapport avec la doctrine alchimique sur la naissance du quatre, et surtout avec la naissance de la conscience, Marie-Louise von Franz dit à propos du trois : « Du un vient le deux, et du deux vient le un comme troisième. Ici également, la ‘progression’ s’accomplit d’une façon rétrograde, en se reportant mentalement à l’unité et en hypostasiant cette dernière en un nouveau contenu de conscience (…). Entendu comme rythme ou dynamisme, le trois introduit un élément de direction dans le rythme oscillatoire du deux, ce qui permet la formation de paramètres spatiaux ou temporels. Ce pas implique l’adjonction d’une conscience qui observe. »x
Si l’Un est seul, il reste inconscient du Tout qu’il contient en puissance, et se coupe plus encore de l’Infini, dont il constitue la base. En tant qu’il est Un, il se prive de l’altérité du Deux, et sans elle, Il ne peut être Tout. En reconnaissant l’Autre comme ce qu’Il n’est pas, l’Un s’ouvre à la différence de fait et d’essence. Et par là, il s’ouvre à la conscience de son identité de son essence et de sa différence.
Le trois est l’Un rendu conscient de l’altérité qui l’unit à l’Autre.
En cela, il est le principe dynamique par excellence.xi
Chlomo ben Jehuda Ibn Gabirol, philosophe et poète juif dans l’Espagne du 11ème siècle, déclare pour sa part, frisant l’hérésie, dans une étrange synthèse judéo-platonico-aristotélicienne : « L’Unité n’est pas la racine de tout, puisque l’Unité n’est qu’une forme et que tout est à la fois forme et matière, mais 3 est la racine de tout, c’est-à-dire que l’unité représente la forme et deux représente la matière. »xii
Si l’on prend un point de vue psychologique sur ces questions, à la suite de Jung et Von Franz, l’on dira que le trois ou la « triade » est un archétype qui habite le préconscient. Le trois réalise symboliquement l’union de l’un avec son opposé interne, le deux, et il représente cette union réalisée dans l’espace-temps des formes et de la matière, c’est-à-dire dans la conscience.
Le Trois incarne la conscience de l’Un.
________________
i Eusèbe de Césarée. Préparation évangélique, 4,15
vii Notons ici incidemment que l’un des attributs d’Apollon, Xantokomès (Ξανθόκομης), en fait aussi un Dieu « à la chevelure rouge-feu »
viiiC.G. Jung. Essais sur la symbolique de l’esprit. Albin Michel, Paris, 1991, p.157
ixMarcel Granet, La Pensée chinoise, Paris 1968, pp.229,233
xMarie-Louise von Franz, Nombre et temps – Psychologie des profondeurs et physique moderne. Ed. La Fontaine de pierre. 2012, p.117
xiR. Allendy, Le symbolisme des nombres, Paris, 1948. p. 41-43. « Trois est bien le principe dynamique par excellence. » « Trois, dit Balzac, est la formule des mondes créés ». Cité par M.-L. Von Franz, op.cit., p. 117, note 9
The Jewish Kabbalah pits the Prophet against the Wise man, and puts the Wise man above the Prophet. Why this hierarchical order? Is it justified? What does it teach us? What can we expect from this vision of things?
Let’s start with some elements of argumentation, against prophetism.
« The Wise man always prevails over the Prophet, for the Prophet is sometimes inspired and sometimes not, while the Holy Spirit never leaves the Wise men; they have knowledge of what has happened Up-There and Down-Here, and they are under no obligation to reveal it. » i
The Wise men « know ». Their wisdom is such that they even dispense with the risk of speaking about it publicly. There would only be blows to be taken, trouble guaranteed. And for what benefit? In their great wisdom, the Wise men are careful not to « reveal » what they « know ». It is precisely because they are « wise » that they do not reveal what is the basis of their « wisdom ».
What do they do then, if they do not reveal their knowledge to the world? Well, they continue to deepen it, they study to climb the ladder of knowledge constantly.
« Those who study the Torah are always preferable to the prophets. They are indeed of a higher level, for they hold themselves Above, in a place called Torah, which is the foundation of all faith. Prophets stand at a lower level, called Netsah and Hod. Therefore, those who study the Torah are more important than the prophets, they are superior to them. » ii
This frontal antagonism between sages and prophets has a long history. It can be summed up in the age-old rivalry between prophetic Judaism and rabbinic Judaism.
Gershom Scholem, who has studied the great currents of Jewish mysticism, notes « an essential point on which Sabbatianism and Hasidism converge, while moving away from the rabbinic scale of values, namely: their conception of the ideal type of man to whom they attribute the function of leader. For rabbinic Jews, especially at that time, the ideal type recognized as the spiritual leader of the community was the scholar, the Torah student, the educated Rabbi. From him, no inner rebirth is required. (…) In place of these masters of the Law, the new movements gave birth to a new type of leader, the seer, the man whose heart was touched and changed by God, in a word, the prophet. » iii
The rivalry between the scholar and the seer can be graduated according to a supposed scale, which would symbolically link the Below and the Above. For rabbinic Judaism, the talmudic scholar, the student of the Torah, is « superior » to the seer, the prophet, or the one whose heart has been changed by God.
Once a sort of scale of comparison is established, other hierarchies proliferate within the caste of the « masters of the Law ». They are based on the more or less proper way of studying the Law, on the more or less proper way of approaching the Torah.
The texts testify to this.
« Why is it written on the one hand, ‘For thy grace is exalted to the heavens’? (Ps 57:11) and on the other hand: ‘Your grace is greater than the heavens’ (Ps 108:5)? There is no contradiction between these two verses. The first refers to those who do not care about the Torah in a selfless way, while the second applies to those who study in a selfless way. » iv
One might conclude (probably too hastily) that it is therefore in one’s interest to be disinterested (as to the purpose of the study), and to be disinterested in any interest (for the purpose of the Torah), if one wants to know the grace that « transcends the heavens ».
But another avenue of research opens up immediately.
Rather than only concerning those who ‘study the Torah’, the grace that ‘ascends to heaven’ and the grace that ‘transcends heaven’ could apply respectively to the masters of the Law and the prophets, – unless it is the other way around? How do we know?
We have just seen that the Zohar resolutely takes sides with the superiority of the masters of the Law over the seers and the prophets. But the ambivalence of the texts of the Hebrew Bible undoubtedly allows for many other interpretations.
Perhaps we can draw on the sayings of the Prophets themselves to form an opinion about them, and try to see if what they have to say can « reach beyond the heavens »?
Isaiah states about his own prophetic mission:
« Yes, so spoke YHVH to me when his hand grasped me and taught me not to follow the path of this people, saying :
‘You will not call a conspiracy all that this people calls a conspiracy, you will not share their fears and you will not be terrified of them. It is YHVH Tsebaot whom you will proclaim holy; it is He who will be the object of your fear and terror.
He will be a sanctuary, a rock that brings down, a stumbling block for the two houses of Israel, a net and a snare for the inhabitants of Jerusalem. Many will stumble, fall and break, and they will be trapped and captured.
Enclose a testimony, seal an instruction in the heart of my disciples’.
I hope in YHVH that hides His face from Jacob’s house. » v
According to Isaiah’s testimony, YHVH declares that He himself is a ‘rock that makes fall’, a ‘stumbling block’, a ‘net and snare’. But a little further on Isaiah radically reverses this metaphor of the ‘stone’ and gives it the opposite meaning :
« Thus says the Lord YHVH:
Behold, I am going to lay in Zion a stone, a granite stone, a cornerstone, a precious stone, a well-established foundation stone: he who trusts in it shall not be shaken. » vi
Contradiction? No.
To paraphrase what was said above about self-serving and selfless study of the Torah, let us argue that the ‘well-grounded foundation stone’ applies to true prophets.
On the other hand, the ‘stumbling block’ refers to the ‘insolent’, those who have ‘made a covenant with death’, who have made ‘lies’ their ‘refuge’ and who have ‘hidden in falsehood’vii, as well as false prophets, priests and all those who claim to ‘teach lessons’ and ‘explain doctrines’….
Isaiah eructs and thunderstruck. His fury bursts out against the pseudo-Masters of the Law.
« They, too, were troubled by the wine, they wandered about under the effect of the drink. Priest and prophet, they were troubled by drink, they were taken with wine, they wandered with drink, they were troubled in their visions, they wandered in their sentences. Yes, all the tables are covered with abject vomit, not a clean place! » viii
The false prophets and priests are drunk and roll around in their abject vomit… Their visions are troubled… Their sentences are rambling… They stutter, they donkey absurd sentences, but YHVH will give them their derisory lessons and knock them off their pedestals :
« Who does He teach the lesson to? To whom does He explain the doctrine? To children barely weaned, barely out of the teat, when He says: ‘çav laçav, çav laçav; qav laqav, qav laqav; ze ‘êr sham, ze ‘êr sham‘ ix. Yes, it is with stuttering lips and in a foreign language that He will speak to this people (…) Thus YHVH will speak to them thus: çav laçav, çav laçav; qav laqav, qav laqav; ze ‘êr sham, ze ‘êr sham‘, so that as they walk they may fall backwards, be broken, be trapped, be imprisoned. » x
As we can see, Isaiah had, more than a millennium beforehand, already warned of the subtle contempt and the self-satisfaction of the Kabbalistic scholars, and of the pseudo-sapiential sentences of rabbinic masters.
Today, what has become of the ancient bipolarity of prophetic and rabbinic Judaism?
It seems that rabbinic Judaism now occupies almost all the ideological terrain. The time of the (true) prophets has indeed been over for more than two millennia. The (false) prophets have been particularly discredited since the recurrent proliferation of multiple « Messiahs » (ranging from Jesus Christ to Isaac Luria, Sabbatai Zevi and Nathan of Gaza…).
There is little hope that the Messiah will risk to come again on the world stage any time soon. We know now what it cost the daring ones who ventured to take the role.
What future, then, for the Eternal People? What future for Judaism in a shrinking, suffering planet, threatened from all sides, especially by war, injustice, biological death?
I don’t know, not being wise enough.
I only know that, in truth, probably only a prophet would be able to answer these questions…
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iZohar II 6b (Shemot). Quoted by Rabbi Hayyim of Volozhyn. The soul of life. Fourth portico: Between God and man: the Torah. Verdier 1986, p.215.
iiZohar III 35a (Tsav). Quoted by Rabbi Hayyim of Volozhyn. The soul of life. Fourth portico: Between God and man: the Torah. Verdier 1986, p.215.
iiiGershom Scholem. The great currents of Jewish mysticism. Trad. M.-M. Davy. Ed. Payot et Rivages, Paris, 2014, pp.483-484
ivRabbi Hayyim of Volozhyn. The soul of life. Fourth portico: Between God and man: the Torah. Ed. Verdier 1986, p.210.
ixLiterally: « Order to order…measure to measure…a little here, a little there ». This can be interpreted as a derogatory imitation of the self-nominated « masters of the Law ».
Les Oracles chaldaïques datent du 2ème siècle de notre ère. C’est un texte court, calme, brûlant, attribué à Julien. Ses formules oraculaires ouvrent des voies brèves, œuvrant d’un éclat ancien ; elles brillent comme un feu sec, – ou des pépites d’or vieux, précieuses, luisantes, usées.
Dont ici quelques étincelles.
(Entre parenthèses, j’en dis ce que j’en perçois, comme d’un halo).
« De l’Esprit, en effet, l’esprit » (νοῦ γάρ νόος).
(Non de la matière, des quarks ou des neurones.)
« Le silence des pères, dont Dieu se nourrit. »
(Non de leurs paroles ou de leurs lois. Il a faim, semble-t-il, de l’errance et du silence de ceux qui le cherchent, comme en un puits sans fond, et non sous les convenances, qu’elles soient montagnes, sacrifices, bois ou temples.)
« Vous qui connaissez, en le pensant, l’abîme paternel, au-delà du cosmos. »
(Il faut sortir du monde, l’horizon est prison et les abîmes des barres. L’esprit ne se veut pas immobile. L’âme ne reste pas là où elle donne la vie. L’un court là où il pense, l’autre vole au-delà, là où elle aime.)
« Tout esprit pense ce Dieu. »
(L’ange et la mouche ont ceci de commun).
« L’Esprit n’existe pas seul, privé de ce à quoi il pense, et ce qu’il pense ne subsiste pas sans l’Esprit. »
(Un peu d’imagination fait voir la puissance de l’esprit. L’Esprit, par anagogie, crée ce qu’Il pense).
« Artisan, ouvrier du monde en feu. »
(Tout ce qui est créé se hâte de monter, comme la bûche en flamme devient lumière, et le charbon chaleur).
« L’orage, s’élançant impétueux, atténue peu à peu la fleur de son feu, en se jetant dans les cavités du monde. »
(Grottes et creux, caves et cuves, gouffres et cavités, – métaphores de l’âme, devant l’éclair et la foudre, l’illumination et l’inondation. Comme dans son ouverture et dans sa nuit, Moïse même se cacha dans la fentei.)
« Pensées intelligentes, qui butinent en abondance, à la source, la fleur du feu, au plus haut point du temps, sans repos. »
(L’intelligence comme une abeille, fait son miel de toutes fleurs. Entrée dans le feu, comme dans sa source, elle s’y consume et se fait miel même.)
« Le feu du soleil, il le fixa à l’emplacement du cœur. »
(Tout ce qui est dans l’homme est caché, – le feu, le ciel, le soleil, le cœur. Tout en lui est en puissance – de mouvement. La conscience toujours s’éveille, avec son essence et sa nature, comme le soleil se lève, elle sort de sa nuit, cherche sa place, change de lieu, et migre loin au-dessus d’elle-même.)
« Aux fulgurations intellectuelles du feu intellectuel, tout cède. »
(La foudre fulgure, éclatante elle illumine, le ciel se vide, et tombe en torrents la pluie qui féconde, unifiant les profondeurs du sein.)
Mille ans après la parution de ces Oracles, Michel Psellus (1018-1098) en a commis ses Commentaires, faisant ressortir leurs influences assyriennes et chaldéennes.
Et mille ans après Psellus, Hans Lewy leur a consacré son grand œuvre, Chaldean Oracles and Theurgy. Mysticism magic and platonism in the later Roman Empire (Le Caire, 1956).
D’autres savants, tels W. Kroll, E. Bréhier, F. Cumont, E.R. Dodds, H. Jonas se sont penchés sur ces textes, entre la fin du 19ème siècle et le début du siècle dernier. Bien avant eux, une chaîne antique de penseurs, Eusèbe, Origène, Proclus, Porphyre, Jamblique, avait tracé quelques pistes de recherche. Il ressortait qu’il fallait remonter à Babylone, et plus avant encore, aux sources du zoroastrisme, pour tenter de comprendre le sens de ces poèmes magico-mystiques, qui obtinrent chez les néo-platoniciens le statut de révélation sacrée.
Qu’en reste-t-il aujourd’hui?
On peut trouver inspirantes des idées comme celle du voyage de l’âme à travers les mondes, et peut-être utiles des mots comme « anagogie » ou « Aïon », dont Jung fit le titre d’une des œuvres majeures, et qui est un autre nom de l’éternité.
Il y aussi l’hypothèse, assez époustouflante si l’on y prend goût, de la révélation d’une « hypostase noétique de la Divinité », formulée par Hans Lewy.
G. Durand eut un jour une formule fameuse: « Le symbole est l’épiphanie d’un mystère. »iii
Ces Oracles, ces symboles de Babylone, ces épiphanies zoroastriennes, semblent mystifier le monde, et leurs charbons éclairent la nuit.
Salomon a dit, non de lui-même, mais sous l’influence de quelque haute inspiration: « Moi, la Sagesse, j’ai habité au Conseil, j’ai appelé à moi la connaissance et la pensée. »iv
Les « modernes » n’habitent plus de tentes au désert, et ils n’ont rien à dire des mystères, de la Sagesse, des sources de la pensée et des « fulgurations de l’esprit ».
Classical Sanskrit is a language which allows a lot of verbal games (śleṣa), and double entendres. This semantic duplicity is not simply linguistic. It has its source in the Veda itself, which gives it a much deeper meaning.
« The ‘double meaning’ is the most remarkable process of the Vedic style (…) The objective is to veil the expression, to attenuate direct intelligibility, in short to create ambiguity. This is what the presence of so many obscure words contributes to, so many others that are likely to have (sometimes, simultaneously) a friendly side, a hostile side. » i
The vocabulary of Ṛg Veda is full of ambiguous words and puns.
For example, the word arí means « friend; faithful, zealous, pious » but also « greedy, envious; hostile, enemy ». The word jána refers to the men of the tribe or clan, but the derived word jánya means « stranger ».
On the puns side, let us quote śáva which means both « force » and « corpse », and the phonetic proximity invites us to attribute it to God Śiva, giving it these two meanings. A representation of Śiva at the Ethnographic Museum in Berlin shows him lying on his back, blue and dead, and a goddess with a fierce appearance, multiple arms, a ravenous mouth, ecstatic eyes, makes love to him, to gather the divine seed.
Particularly rich in contrary meanings are the words that apply to the sphere of the sacred.
Thus the root vṛj- has two opposite senses. On the one hand, it means « to overthrow » (the wicked), on the other hand « to attract to oneself » (the Divinity) as Louis Renouii notes. Huet’s Sanskrit dictionary proposes two pallets of meanings for this root: « to bend, to twist; to tear out, to pick, to take away, to exclude, to alienate » and « to choose, to select; to reserve for oneself », which we can see that they can be applied in two antagonistic intentions: rejection or appropriation.
The keyword devá plays a central role, but its meaning is particularly ambiguous. Its primary meaning is « brilliant », « being of light », « divine ». But in RV I,32,12, devá designates Vṛta, the « hidden », the god Agni hid himself as « the one who took human form »iii. And in later texts the word devá is clearly used to refer to ‘demons’iv.
This ambiguity is accentuated when it is prefixed like in ādeva or ádeva: « The word ādeva is different: sometimes it is a doublet of ádeva – ‘impious’ – which is even juxtaposed with in RV VI 49:15; sometimes the word means ‘turned towards the gods’. It is significant that two terms of almost opposite meanings have merged into one and the same form. » v
This phonetic ambiguity of the word is not only ‘significant’, but it seems to me that it allows to detect a crypto-theology of the negative God, of the God « hidden » in his own negation…
The ambiguity installed at this level indicates the Vedic propensity to reduce (by phonetic shifts and approximations) the a priori radical gap between God and Non-God.
The closeness and ambiguity of the meanings makes it possible to link, by metonymy, the clear negation of God (ádeva) and what could be described as God’s ‘procession’ towards Himself (ādeva).
The Sanskrit language thus more or less consciously stages the potential reversibility or dialectical equivalence between the word ádeva (« without God » or « Non-God ») and the word ādeva which, on the contrary, underlines the idea of a momentum or movement of God « towards » God, as in this formula of a hymn addressed to Agni: ā devam ādevaṃ, « God turned towards God », or « God devoted to God » (RV VI, 4,1) .
This analysis is confirmed by the very clear case of the notion of Asura, which combines in a single word two extreme opposite meanings, that of « supreme deity » and that of « enemy of the deva« vi.
The ambiguity of the words reflects on the Gods by name. Agni is the very type of the beneficent deity, but he is also evoked as durmati (foolish) in a passage from RV VII, 1,22. Elsewhere he is accused of constant deceit (RV V,19,4). The God Soma plays a prominent role in all Vedic rites of sacrifice, but he is also described as deceitful (RV IX 61,30), and there are several instances of a demonized Soma identified at Vṛtra. vii
What interpretation should be given to these opposing and concurrent meanings?
Louis Renou opts for the magic idea. « The reversibility of acts as well as formulas is a feature of magical thinking. One puts deities into action against deities, a sacrifice against one’s sacrifice, a word against one’s word ». (MS II, 1,7) »viii.
Anything that touches the sacred can be turned upside down, or overturned.
The sacred is at the same time the source of the greatest goods but also of panic terror, by all that it keeps of mortal dread.
If we turn to the specialist in comparative myth analysis that was C. G. Jung, another interpretation emerges, that of the « conjunction of opposites », which is « synonymous with unconsciousness ».
« The conjuctio oppositorum occupied the speculation of the alchemists in the form of the chymic marriage, and also that of the Kabbalists in the image of Tipheret and Malchut, of God and the Shekinah, not to mention the marriage of the Lamb. » ix
Jung also makes the link with the Gnostic conception of a God ‘devoid of consciousness’ (anennoetos theos). The idea of the agnosia of God psychologically means that God is assimilated to the ‘numinosity of the unconscious’, which is reflected in the Vedic philosophy of Ātman and Puruṣa in the East as well as in that of Master Eckhart in the West.
« The idea that the creator god is not conscious, but that perhaps he is dreaming is also found in the literature of India:
Who could probe it, who will say
Where was he born and where did he come from?
The gods came out of him here.
Who says where they come from?
He who produced the creation
Who contemplates it in the very high light of the sky,
Similarly, Master Eckhart’s theology implies « a ‘divinity’ of which no property can be asserted except that of unity and being, it ‘becomes’, it is not yet Lord of oneself, and it represents an absolute coincidence of opposites. But its simple nature is formless of forms, without becoming of becoming, without being of beings. A conjunction of opposites is synonymous with unconsciousness, because consciousness supposes a discrimination as well as a relation between subject and object. The possibility of consciousness ceases where there is not yet ‘another’. » xi
Can we be satisfied with the Gnostic (or Jungian) idea of the unconscious God? Isn’t it a contradiction for Gnosis (which wants to be supremely ‘knowledge’) to take for God an unconscious God?
Jung’s allusion to the Jewish Kabbalah allows me to return to the ambiguities in biblical Hebrew. This ambiguity is particularly evident in the ‘names of God’. God is supposed to be the One par excellence, but in the Torah there are formally ten names of God: Ehyeh, Yah, Eloha, YHVH, El, Elohim, Elohe Israel, Zevahot, Adonai, Chaddai. xii
This multiplicity of names hides in it an additional profusion of meanings deeply hidden in each of them. Moses de Leon, thus comments on the first name mentioned, Ehyeh:
« The first name: Ehyeh(‘I will be’). It is the secret of the proper Name and it is the name of unity, unique among all His names. The secret of this name is that it is the first of the names of the Holy One blessed be He. And in truth, the secret of the first name is hidden and concealed without any unveiling; therefore, it is the secret of ‘I will be’ because it persists in its being in the secret of mysterious depth until the Secret of Wisdom arises, from which there is unfolding of everything. » xiii
A beginning of explanation is perhaps given by the comment of Moses de Leon about the second name :
« The secret of the second name is Yah. A great principle is that Wisdom is the beginning of the name emerging from the secret of Clear Air, and it is he, yes he, who is destined to be revealed according to the secret of ‘For I will be’. They said: » ‘I will be’ is a name that is not known and revealed, ‘For I will be’. « Although the secret of Yah [YH] is that it is half of the name [the name YHVH], nevertheless it is the fullness of all, in that it is the principle of all existence, the principle of all essences. » xiv
Judaism uncompromisingly affirms the absolute unity of God and ridicules the Christian idea of the ‘divine Trinity’, but it does not, however, refrain from some incursions into this very territory:
« Why should the Sefirot be ten and not three, in accordance with the secret of Unity that lies in three? You have already treated and discussed the secret of Unity and dissected the secret of : YHVH, our God, YHVH’ (Deut 6:4). You have dealt with the secret of His unity, blessed be His name, concerning these three names, as well as the secret of His Holiness according to the riddle of the three holinesses: ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ (Is 6:3).
(…) You need to know in the secret of the depths of the question you asked that ‘YHVH, our God, YHVH’ is the secret of three things and how they are one. (…) You will discover it in the secret: ‘Holy, holy, holy’ (Is 6:3) which Jonathan ben Myiel said and translated into Aramaic in this way: ‘Holy in the heavens above, dwelling place of His presence, Holy on earth where He performs His deeds, Holy forever and for all eternity of eternities’. In fact, the procession of holiness takes place in all the worlds according to their descent and their hierarchical position, and yet holiness is one. » xv
The idea of the ‘procession of the three Holies’ is found almost word for word in the pages of the book On the Trinity written by St. Augustine, almost a thousand years before the Sheqel ha-Qodeshof Moses de Leon… But what does it matter! It seems that our time prefers to privilege sharp and radical oppositions rather than to encourage the observation of convergences and similarities.
Let us conclude. The Veda, by its words, shows that the name devá of God can play with its own negation (ádeva), to evoke the « procession » of God « towards God » (ādeva).
A thousand years later, God revealed to Moses His triple name ‘Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh‘. Then, three thousand years after the Ṛg Veda, the Jewish Kabbalah interpreted the mystery of the name Ehyeh, as an ‘I will be’ yet to come – ‘For I will be’. A pungent paradox for radical monotheism, it also affirms the idea of a « procession » of the three « Holinesses » of the One God.
Language, be it Vedic or biblical, far from being a museum of dead words and frozen concepts, has throughout the ages constantly presented the breadth, depth and width of its scope. It charges each word with meanings, sometimes necessarily contrary or contradictory, and then nurtures them with all the power of intention, which is revealed through interpretation.
Words hold in reserve all the energy, wisdom and intelligence of those who relentlessly think of them as being the intermediaries of the absolute unthinkable and unspeakable.
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iLouis Renou. Choice of Indian studies. EFEO Press. Paris, 1997, p.36-37
iiLouis Renou. Choice of Indian studies. §16. EFEO Press. Paris, 1997, p. 58
xiiCf. The Gate of the Ten Names that are not erased », in Moses de Leon. Sheqel ha-Qodesh. Translated by Charles Mopsik. Verdier. 1996. pp. 278-287.
xiii« The Gate of the Ten Names that are not erased, » in Moses de Leon. Sheqel ha-Qodesh. Translated by Charles Mopsik. Verdier. 1996. p. 280.
xiv« The Gate of the Ten Names that are not erased, » in Moses de Leon. Sheqel ha-Qodesh. Translated by Charles Mopsik. Verdier. 1996. p. 281-282
xv« The Gate of the Ten Names that are not erased, » in Moses de Leon. Sheqel ha-Qodesh. Translated by Charles Mopsik. Verdier. 1996. pp. 290, 292, 294.
Le « torcol » est un drôle d’oiseau. Il a deux doigts en avant et deux en arrière, selon Aristote. Il pousse des petits cris aigus. Il est capable de tirer longuement sa langue, à la manière des serpents. Il tire son nom, « torcol », de sa capacité à tourner le cou sans que le reste de son corps ne bouge. Et surtout il est capable de faire tomber les femmes et les hommes en amour.
Lorsque Jason partit à la recherche de la Toison d’or, il dut affronter mille difficultés. Heureusement la déesse Aphrodite décida de lui venir en aide, en rendant Médée amoureuse de lui, par le truchement d’un torcol, ou « bergerette ». En grec, cet oiseau se nomme ἴϋγξ, transcrit en « iynge ».
« Alors la déesse aux flèches acérées, Cyprine, ayant attaché un torcol aux mille couleurs sur les quatre rayons d’une roue inébranlable, apporta de l’Olympe aux mortels cet oiseau du délire, et apprit au sage fils d’Éson des prières et des enchantements, afin que Médée perdit tout respect pour sa famille, et que l’amour de la Grèce agitât ce cœur en feu sous le fouet de Pitho. » i
La magie opéra. L’« oiseau du délire » remplit Médée d’amour pour Jason, et « tous deux conviennent de s’unir par les doux liens du mariage. »
Le torcol a une autre qualité encore, celle de « transmetteur de messages », décrite dans un texte de la fin du 2ème siècle ap. J.-C., les Oracles chaldaïquesii. Le fragment 78 évoque les « iynges », qui « transmettent des messages comme le font les « intermédiaires » (metaxu) et les « démons » (daimon) platoniciens. Le « feu », métaphore de « l’âme du monde », est aussi l’un de ces intermédiaires.
Les âmes sont reliées au feu, parce qu’elles viennent de lui: « L’âme humaine, étincelle du Feu originel, descend par un acte de sa volonté les degrés de l’échelle des êtres, et vient s’enfermer dans la geôle d’un corps. »iii
Comment cette descente s’opère-t-elle ? Quels rôles respectifs jouent le Feu originel, « âme du monde », et l’étincelle des âmes ?
C’est une vieille croyance orientale que les âmes portent des voiles, des vêtements. Les âmes, dans leur descente depuis le Feu originel, se revêtent des qualités des plans intermédiaires comme autant de tuniques successives,.
Chaque âme incarnée est en réalité un dieu tombé, dira-t-on « déchu » ?
Elle doit s’efforcer de sortir de l’oubli (d’elle-même) dans lequel elle a ainsi sombré. Il lui faut pour cela proférer une certaine parole, en souvenir de son origine.
Il lui faut quitter le « troupeau », soumis au destin « intraitable, pesant, sans part à la lumière », afin « d’éviter l’aile impudente du sort fatal ».iv
Ces idées « orientales », « chaldaïques », ont grandement influencé des penseurs grecs comme Porphyre, Jamblique, Syrianus et Proclus. Elles leur permettaient de décrire la « remontée de l’âme », l’ἀναγωγηv. Elles se substituaient aux idées de la philosophie grecque, pratiquée encore par Plotin, et ouvraient la voie à la théurgie.
La théurgie est « un système religieux qui nous fait entrer en contact avec les dieux, non pas seulement par la pure élévation de notre intellect vers le Noûs divin, mais au moyen de rites concrets et d’objets matériels ».vi
La théurgie chaldaïque est pleine de signes admirables. On y côtoie l’indicible, qui s’exprime en symboles ineffables. « Les noms sacrés des dieux et les autres symboles divins font monter vers les dieux. »vii
La prière chaldaïque est efficace, car « les supplications hiératiques sont les symboles des dieux mêmes »viii.
Au 11ème siècle, Michel Psellus expliqua que « ce sont les anges de l’ascension qui font monter les âmes vers eux, en les tirant du devenir. Ils les soustraient pour cela aux « liens qui les lient », c’est-à-dire aux natures vengeresses des démons et aux épreuves des âmes humaines. »
Les Oracles chaldaïques donne ce conseil aux amateurs d’ascension spirituelle: « Que s’ouvre la profondeur immortelle de l’âme, et dilate bien en haut tous tes yeux ! ». ix
Dans son commentaire des Oracles chaldaïques, Psellus précise la nature du défi à relever: « Dieu est au-delà de l’intelligible et de l’intelligible en soi. Car il est supérieur à toute parole, à toute pensée, comme entièrement impensable et inexprimable, et mieux honoré par le silence, qu’il ne serait glorifié par des mots d’admiration. Car il est au-dessus même de la glorification, de l’expression, de la pensée. »x
Du point de vue comparatif, il est fort frappant de trouver dans les cérémonies védiques une approche structurellement équivalente des mystères de la Divinité. Au côté des prêtres qui opèrent le sacrifice védique, se tiennent des prêtres qui récitent les hymnes divins, d’autres qui les psalmodient et d’autres enfin qui les chantent. Surveillant l’ensemble, il y a un autre prêtre encore, le plus élevé dans la hiérarchie, qui se tient immobile et reste en silence, pendant toute la cérémonie.
Hymnes, psaumes, chants, doivent le céder en tout au silence même, dans la religion chaldaïque comme dans la religion védique.
L’autre point commun est l’importance primordiale du symbole du feu.
Les deux traditions, par ailleurs fort éloignées l’une de l’autre à maints égards, transmettent le souvenir d’une lumière venue d’une ancienne et profonde nuit. Elles se réfèrent toutes deux à la puissance d’un Feu originaire, et l’opposent à la faiblesse de la flamme qu’il a été donné à l’homme de faire vivre :
« Le Feu a la force d’un glaive lumineux qui brille de tranchants spirituels. Il ne faut donc pas concevoir cet Esprit avec véhémence, mais par la flamme subtile d’un subtil intellect, qui mesure toutes choses, sauf cet Intelligible. »xi
L’esprit mesure et comprend toutes choses, sauf l’Intelligible même, qui lui permet cette mesure et cette intellection.
Il y a dans l’esprit une puissance de connaissance, qui peut s’appliquer à tout, sauf à elle-même. L’esprit ne peut se mesurer lui-même, et ni comprendre la puissance de sa propre capacité d’intellection.
Une troisième tradition s’est aussi intéressée à la question de l’intelligence dans l’esprit, en tant qu’elle s’applique à elle-même. Mais elle va notablement plus loin que les Oracles Chaldaïques ou que les Védas, sur ce chemin difficile et escarpé.
Paul de Tarse lui donne cette forme :
« Vous devez être renouvelés dans votre esprit (τῷ πνεύματι, tôpneuma), en tant qu’il est intelligence (νοὸς, noos) » :
Comment l’esprit peut-il se renouveler, par sa propre intelligence, cachée dans la profondeur même de son être ?
Maître Eckhart a cherché à expliquer cette puissance interne de renouvellement par la métaphore de l’étincelle, singulière et fécondante.
« Quand l’homme se détourne de lui-même et de tout le créé – dans la mesure où tu fais ça, tu es amené à l’unité et à la béatitude dans la petite étincelle de l’âme qui n’a jamais eu rien à faire avec l’espace et le temps. Cette étincelle s’oppose à toutes les créatures (…) Oui, j’affirme : il ne suffit pas non plus à cette lumière que la nature divine, fécondante, s’engendre en elle. Je vais plus loin encore, et cela semble encore plus extraordinaire : j’affirme en toute gravité qu’à cette lumière ne suffit pas non plus l’essence divine unique, reposant en soi, qui ne donne ni ne reçoit : elle veut savoir d’où vient cet être ; dans le fond simple, dans le désert tranquille où jamais quelque chose de distinct n’a jeté un regard, dans le pli intime de l’être, là où personne n’est chez soi, là seulement cette lumière se tient pour satisfaite, et elle lui appartient plus intérieurement qu’elle ne s’appartient à elle-même. »xiii
Il y a dans l’esprit, pouvons-nous penser, une puissance inconsciente, emplie de formes, ou d’images de formes, – ces formes que Platon nommait « idées » et que C.G. Jung proposa d’appeler « archétypes ». Cette puissance archétypale est immémoriale, originaire, elle est chargée de toutes les richesses de l’inconscient collectif, dont notre mémoire, consciemment ou inconsciemment, répand à tout moment le trésor vivant dans les autres facultés de l’esprit.
L’âme s’y renouvelle dans la mesure où, comme l’esprit, elle se détache librement de l’ici et du maintenant et de tout ce qui est dans le monde ou la nature, pour se replonger dans son origine.
iiLa plus ancienne collection des Oracles chaldaïques qui nous soit parvenue est due à Pléthon (1360-1452) et s’intitulait alors: « Oracles magiques des disciples de Zoroastre. » Par là, à nouveau, on voit s’établir un lien entre le monde égypto-judéo-grec d’Alexandrie avec les centres mésopotamien et iranien de pensée.
viiSynésius de Cyrène (370-413) énonce un certain nombre de ces noms efficaces. Άνθος est la « fleur de l’Esprit », Βένθος est le « profond », Κολπος est le « Sein ineffable » (de Dieu), Σπινθήρ est « l’Étincelle de l’âme, formée de l’Esprit et du Vouloir divins, puis du chaste Amour » : « Je porte en moi un germe venu de Toi, une étincelle de noble intelligence, qui s’est enfoncée dans les profondeurs de la matière. » Ταναός est la « flamme de l’esprit tendué à l’extrême », et Τομή est « la coupure, la division », par laquelle se produit « l’éclat du Premier Esprit qui blesse les yeux ».Proclus s’empara de ces thèmes nouveaux pour éveiller la « fleur », la « fine pointe de l’âme ». Cf. Édouard des Places, dans son introduction à sa traduction des Oracles chaldaïques (1971)
viiiÉdouard des Places, dans son introduction à sa traduction des Oracles chaldaïques (1971)
xiiiMaître Eckhart. Sermons-Traités. « De la sortie de l’esprit et de son retour chez lui ». Traduction de l’allemand par Paul Petit. Gallimard. 1942, p.122
Hegel puts science far above religion in the final chapter of Phenomenology of the Mind.
Why? Because only science is capable of true knowledge.
What is true knowledge ? It is the knowledge that the mind has of itself.
« As long as the spirit has not been fulfilled in itself, fulfilled as a spirit of the world (Weltgeist), it cannot reach its perfection as a self-conscious spirit. Thus in time, the content of religion expresses earlier than science what the spirit is, but science alone is the true knowledge that the spirit has of itself ». i
Today, we are nearing the end of the Hegelian « system ». We are at the end of the book. But there are still a few crucial steps to be taken…
First of all, the spirit must be « self-fulfilling », that is to say, it must be « fulfilled as the spirit of the world ». After this accomplishment, we could say that it has reached its perfection.
This perfection can be measured as follows: it has become a self-conscious mind.
But how can we be aware of this accomplishment as « spirit of the world », of this accomplishment of the mind as « self-awareness »?
How can we get some knowledge about the mind becoming self-aware?
By religion? No.
Religion does not yet express true knowledge about the spirit. Religion expresses what the spirit is, when it is finally fulfilled as « spirit of the world ». But this is not enough. What religion expresses (by its content) is not yet true knowledge.
So what is true knowledge about the self-conscious mind?
True knowledge is not what the mind is, but what the mind has, – true knowledge is the knowledge that the mind has of itself.
Religion, by its content, can give an idea of what the mind is, but it remains somehow outside the mind, it does not penetrate the essence of the mind.
In order to really know, we must now enter into the spirit itself, and not be satisfied with the content of religion, which gives only an external image of it.
To reach true knowledge, one can only rely on « science alone ».
How does this « science » work?
« Science alone » makes it possible to go beyond the content ofreligion and finally penetrate the mysteries of the mind.
By entering the mind itself, « science alone » accesses what the mind knows of itself, it accesses the knowledge that the mind has of itself, which alone is true knowledge.
That is the goal, the absolute knowledge: the mind knowing itself as mind.
Given the emphasis thus placed on « absolute knowledge » as the final goal, one might be tempted to describe the Hegelian approach as « Gnostic ».
Gnosis (from the Greek gnosis, knowledge) flourished in the first centuries of our era, but it undoubtedly had much more ancient roots. Gnosticism was intended to be the path to the absolute ‘knowledge’ of God, including the knowledge of the world and of history. Ernest Renan noted incidentally that the word ‘Gnostic’ (Gnosticos) has the same meaning as the word ‘Buddha’, « He who knows ».
Some specialists agree on Simon the Magician as being at the origin of Gnosticism among Judeo-Christians, as early as the first century AD. Who was Simon the Magician? Renan, with a definite sense of provocation, but armed with considerable references, speculates that Simon the Magician may well have been the apostle Paul himself. Adolf von Harnack, more cautious, also puts forward this hypothesis but does not settle the question.
Was Paul a « Gnostic »? Or at least, was his doctrine a Gnostic one, in some respects?
Perhaps. Thus, as Hegel will do later, long after him, Paul used a formula with Gnostic resonances : the « spirit of the world ».
But unlike Hegel, who identifies the « spirit of the world » (Weltgeist) with the « accomplished » spirit, the « self-conscious » spirit, Paul radically contrasts the « spirit of the world » (« pneuma tou kosmou ») with the spirit of God (« pneuma tou theou »).
« We have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which comes from God, that we may know the good things which God has given us by his grace »ii.
Not only is the « spirit of the world » nothing like the « Spirit that comes from God, » but the « knowledge » we derive from it is never more than the « knowledge of the blessings » that God has given us. It is not, therefore, the intimate knowledge of the « self-conscious mind » that Hegel seeks to achieve.
One could infer that Hegel is in this respect much more Gnostic than Paul.
For Hegel, the « spirit of the world » is already a figure of the fulfillment of the « self-conscious mind, » that is, a prefiguration of the mind capable of attaining « absolute knowledge ». One could even add that « the spirit of the world » is for Hegel a hypostasis of Absolute Knowledge, that is, a hypostasis of God.
However, the idea of « absolute knowledge » as divine hypostasis does not correspond in any way to Paul’s profound feeling about the « knowledge » of God.
This feeling can be summarized as follows:
On the one hand, people can know the « idea » of God.
On the other hand, men can know the « spirit ».
Let’s look at these two points.
– On the one hand, people can know the « idea » of God.
« The idea of God is known to them [men], God has made it known to them. What He has had unseen since creation can be seen by the intellect through His works, His eternal power and divinity ». iii
Men cannot see God, but ‘His invisible things’ can be seen. « This vision of the invisible is the idea of God that men can ‘know’, the idea of his « invisibility ».
It is a beginning, but this knowledge through the idea is of no use to them, « since, having known God, they have not given him as to a God of glory or thanksgiving, but they have lost the sense in their reasoning and their unintelligent heart has become darkened: in their claim to wisdom they have gone mad and have changed the glory of the incorruptible God against a representation. » iv
The knowledge of the invisibility of God, and the knowledge of the incomprehensibility and insignificance of our lives, do not add up to a clear knowledge. In the best of cases, this knowledge is only one « light » among others, and these « lights » that are ours are certainly not the light of « Glory » that we could hope to « see » if we had really « seen » God.
It is as much to say then that these human « lights » are only « darkness », that our intelligence is « vain » and that our heart is « unintelligent ». We are limited on all sides. « Empty of meaning, left to his own resources, man faces the forces which, empty of meaning, reign over the world (…) Heartless, understanding without seeing, and therefore vain, such has become thought; and without thought, seeing without understanding, and therefore blind, such has become the heart. The soul is alien to the world and the world is without a soul when they do not meet in the knowledge of the unknown God, when man strives to avoid the true God, when he should lose himself and the world, in order to find himself and the world again in this God. » v
The only sure knowledge we have, therefore, is that we always walk in the night.
– On the other hand, men can have a knowledge of the mind.
Here, two things:
If the spirit has always been silent, if it is still silent, or if it has never just existed, then there is nothing to say about it. The only possible « way » then is silence. A silence of death. There is nothing to know about it.
But if the spirit means, if it speaks, however little, then this sign or word necessarily comes into us as from someone Other than ourselves.
This sign or word is born in us from a life that was certainly not in us until then, not in the least. And this life that was not in us could even die, before us, and like us.
Words, writings, acts, silences, absences, refusals, life, death, all of this always refers us back only to ourselves, to extensible « I’s » whose tour we make indefinitely, – a potentially cosmic tour (in theory), but really always the same (deep down).
Only the spirit has the vocation to burst in, to suddenly melt into us as the very Other, with its breath, its inspiration, its life, its fire, its knowledge.
Without this blatant breath, this inspiration, this living life, this fire of flame, this knowledge in birth, I would never be but me. I would not find, alone, helpless by myself, any clue whatsoever, from the path to the abyss, from the bridge over the worlds, from Jacob’s ladders to heaven.
It is certainly not the man who enters of himself into the knowledge of the Spirit « conscious of himself », on his way to « absolute knowledge ». It is rather the opposite, according to testimonies.
It is the Spirit, « conscious of itself », which enters, of itself, into the spirit of man to make itself known there. Man, if he is vigilant, then knows the Spirit, not as a « self-conscious » Spirit, but only as a « grace », – the grace of « knowing » that there is an « Other consciousness ».
Another name for the « Other » is « truth ». The Spirit is « Other » and it is « truth » (in this, Hegel is no different). But it is not we who can see the truth, who can consider it objectively. It is the opposite. It is the truth that sees us, from its own primal point of view. Our own point of view is always subjective, fragmented, pulverized.
But the true cannot be subjective, exploded, pulverized.
As for what the true is, one can only say (negatively) that it is hidden, unknown, foreign, unfathomable, beyond all knowledge.
The true is beyond life and death, beyond all life and death. If truth were not beyond life and death, it would not be « true ».
It would be life, and death, that would be « true » instead of the « true ».
We don’t know what the True is. We do not know what the Spirit is.
We can only hope to find out one day.
Hoping for what we don’t see is already a bit like knowing it.
And we are not necessarily alone in this expectation.
If the Spirit is not pure nothingness, it is not impossible to hope for a sign of it one day.
If it is « breath », some breeze can be expected (as the prophet Elijah testifies):
« And after the hurricane there was a hurricane, so strong and so violent that it split the mountains and broke the rocks, but the Lord was not in the hurricane; and after the hurricane there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire, and after the fire there was the murmur of a gentle breeze. »vi
From the Spirit, we can always expect the « unexpressed »:
« The Spirit also comes to meet our weakness. For we do not know what we should be praying for as we should. But the Spirit himself, in his overpowering power, intercedes for us with unspoken sighs, and he who searches the hearts knows what the Spirit’s thought is (‘to phronèma tou pneumatos’), andthat his intercession for the saints corresponds to God’s views. » vii
Even prayer is useless in this waiting, in this hope. You never know how to pray.
Man does not know how to get out of himself, he does not know the way out of what he has always been.
He knows nothing of the encounter with the living God.
And even if he met Him, he knows nothing of what the Spirit thinks.
But that doesn’t mean that man can never get out of himself. He can – if the circumstances are right, or if he gets a little help.
We don’t even know that yet. We are only waiting without impatience.
We look into the distance. Or beyond. Or within. Or below.
There are in us two men, one from the earth, the other from heavenviii.
And it is the latter, the man from heaven in us, who can feel the light breath, and hear the murmur.
_______________
iHegel. Phenomenology of the mind, II. Trad. J. Hyppolite. Aubier, 1941, p.306
The one « who was once great » and « ready for all battles » is Ouranos (the God of Heaven).
And the one who « found his conqueror and vanished » is Chronos, God of time, father of Zeus, and vanquished by him.
Of these two Gods, one could say at the time of the Trojan War, according to the testimony of Aeschylus, that the first (Ouranos) was already considered to have « never existed » and that the second (Chronos) had « disappeared » …
From those ancient times, there was therefore only ‘God alone’ (πλὴν Διός) who reigned in the hearts and minds of the Ancients…
The ‘victory’ of this one God, ‘Zeus’, this supreme God, God of all gods and men, was celebrated with songs of joy in Greece in the 5th century BC.
But one also wondered about its essence – as the formula ‘whatever He is’ reveals -, and one wondered if this very name, ‘Zeus’, could really suit him….
Above all, they were happy that Zeus had opened the path of ‘wisdom’ to mortals, and that he had brought them the consolation of knowing that ‘from suffering comes knowledge’.
Martin Buber offers a very concise interpretation of the last verses quoted above, which he aggregates into one statement:
« Zeus is the All, and that which surpasses it. » iii
How to understand this interpretation?
Is it faithful to the profound thought of Aeschylus?
Let us return to Agamemnon’s text. We read on the one hand:
« He who celebrates Zeus with all his soul will seize the Whole of the heart« .
and immediately afterwards :
« He [Zeus] has set mortals on the path of wisdom. »
Aeschylus uses three times in the same sentence, words with the same root: προφρόνως (prophronos), φρενῶν (phronōn) and φρονεῖν (phronein).
To render these three words, I deliberately used three very different English words: soul, heart, wisdom.
I rely on Onians in this regard: « In later Greek, phronein first had an intellectual sense, ‘to think, to have the understanding of’, but in Homer the sense is broader: it covers undifferentiated psychic activity, the action of phrenes, which includes ’emotion’ and also ‘desire’. » iv
In the translation that I offer, I mobilize the wide range of meanings that the word phren can take on: heart, soul, intelligence, will or seat of feelings.
Having said this, it is worth recalling, I believe, that the primary meaning of phrēn is to designate any membrane that ‘envelops’ an organ, be it the lungs, heart, liver or viscera.
According to the Ancient Greek dictionary of Bailly, the first root of all the words in this family is Φραγ, « to enclose », and according to the Liddell-Scott the first root is Φρεν, « separate ».
Chantraine believes for his part that « the old interpretation of φρήν as « dia-phragm », and phrassô « to enclose » has long since been abandoned (…) It remains to be seen that φρήν belongs to an ancient series of root-names where several names of body parts appear ». v
For us, it is even more interesting to observe that these eminent scholars thus dissonate on the primary meaning of phrēn…vi
Whether the truly original meaning of phrēnis « to enclose » or « to separate » is of secondary importance, since Aeschylus tells us that, thanks to Zeus, mortal man are called to « come out » of this closed enclosure, the phrēnes,and to « walk out » on the path of wisdom…
The word « heart » renders the basic (Homeric) meaning of φρενῶν (phrēn) ( φρενῶν is the genitive of the noun φρήν (phrēn), « heart, soul »).
The word « wisdom » » translates the verbal expression τὸν φρονεῖν (ton phronein), « the act of thinking, of reflecting ». Both words have the same root, but the substantive form has a more static nuance than the verb, which implies the dynamics of an action in progress, a nuance that is reinforced in the text of Aeschylus by the verb ὁδώσαντα (odôsanta), « he has set on the way ».
In other words, the man who celebrates Zeus « reaches the heart » (teuxetai phronein) « in its totality » (to pan), but it is precisely then that Zeus puts him « on the path » of « thinking » (ton phronein).
« Reaching the heart in its entirety » is therefore only the first step.
It remains to walk into the « thinking »…
Perhaps this is what Martin Buber wanted to report on when he translated :
« Zeus is the All, and that which surpasses him »?
But we must ask ourselves what « exceeds the Whole » in this perspective.
According to the development of Aeschylus’ sentence, what « surpasses » the Whole (or rather « opens a new path ») is precisely « the fact of thinking » (tonphronein).
The fact of taking the path of « thinking » and of venturing on this path (odôsanta), made us discover this divine law:
« From suffering is born knowledge », πάθει μάθος (pathei mathos)...
But what is this ‘knowledge’ (μάθος, mathos) of which Aeschylus speaks, and which the divine law seems to promise to the one who sets out on his journey?
Greek philosophy is very cautious on the subject of divine ‘knowledge’. The opinion that seems to prevail is that one can at most speak of a knowledge of one’s ‘non-knowledge’…
In Cratylus, Plato writes:
« By Zeus! Hermogenes, if only we had common sense, yes, there would be a method for us: to say that we know nothing of the Gods, neither of themselves, nor of the names they can personally designate themselves, because these, it is clear, the names they give themselves are the true ones! » vii
Léon Robin translates ‘εἴπερ γε νοῦν ἔχοιμεν’ as ‘if we had common sense’. But νοῦς (or νοός) actually means ‘mind, intelligence, ability to think’. The metaphysical weight of this word goes in fact much beyond ‘common sense’.
It would therefore be better to translate, in this context, I think :
« If we had Spirit [or Intelligence], we would say that we know nothing of the Gods, nor of them, nor of their names. »
As for the other Greek poets, they also seem very reserved as for the possibility of piercing the mystery of the Divine.
Euripides, in the Trojans, makes Hecuba say:
« O you who bear the earth and are supported by it,
whoever you are, impenetrable essence,
Zeus, inflexible law of things or intelligence of man,
The translation given here by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade does not satisfy me. Consulting other translations available in French and English, and using the Greek-French dictionary by Bailly and the Greek-English dictionary by Liddell and Scott, I finally came up with a result more in line with my expectations:
« You who bear the earth, and have taken it for your throne,
Whoever You are, inaccessible to knowledge,
Zeus, or Law of Nature, or Spirit of Mortals,
I offer You my prayers, for walking with a silent step,
You lead all human things to justice. »
Greek thought, whether it is conveyed by Socrates’ fine irony that nothing can be said of the Gods, especially if one has Spirit, or whether it is sublimated by Euripides, who sings of the inaccessible knowledge of the God named « Whoever You Are », leads to the mystery of the God who walks in silence, and without a sound.
On the other hand, before Plato, and before Euripides, it seems that Aeschylus did indeed glimpse an opening, the possibility of a path.
Which path?
The one that opens « the fact of thinking » (ton phronein).
It is the same path that begins with ‘suffering’ (pathos) and ends with the act of ‘knowledge’ (mathos).
It is also the path of the God who walks « in silence ».
___________________
iΖεύς (‘Zeus’) is nominative, and Διός (‘God’) is genitive.
iiAeschylus. Agammemnon. Trad. by Émile Chambry (freely adapted and modified). Ed. GF. Flammarion. 1964, p.138
iiiMartin Buber. Eclipse of God. Ed. Nouvelle Cité, Paris, 1987, p.31.
ivRichard Broxton Onians. The origins of European thought. Seuil, 1999, pp. 28-29.
vPierre Chantraine. Etymological dictionary of the Greek language. Ed. Klincksieck, Paris, 1968.
Jacob Taubes wrote an article, The controversy between Judaism and Christianity, whose subtitle reads: « Considerations on their indissoluble difference« i, in which he densely summed up what he views as the essence of the « impossible dialogue between « the Synagogue » and « the Church » ».
This non-dialogue has been going on for two millennia, and will only end at the end of time, in all probability.
The popular expression « Judeo-Christian tradition » is often used. But it is meaningless. Above all, it impedes a full understanding of the « fundamental » differences in the « controversial questions concerning the Jewish and Christian religions » that « continue to influence every moment of our lives ». ii
From the outset, Jacob Taubes asserts that no concession on the part of Judaism towards Christianity is possible. The opposition is frontal, radical, absolute, irremediable.
In order for two parties to begin any kind of debate, at the very least, they must recognize each other’s legitimate right to participate in that debate.
However, these really basic conditions are not even fulfilled…
One party does not recognize the other. Christianity means nothing to Judaism. Christianity has absolutely no religious legitimacy for the latter:
« For the Jewish faith, the Christian religion in general and the body of the Christian Church in particular have no religious significance. For the Church, there is a Jewish « mystery, » but the Synagogue knows no « Christian » mystery of any kind. For Jewish belief, the Christian Church cannot have any religious significance; and the division of historical time into a « before Christ » and an « after Christ » cannot be recognized by the Synagogue. Moreover, it cannot even be recognized as something that, though meaningless to the Jewish people, represents a truth to the rest of the world. » iii
The denial of Christianity by Judaism is implacable, definitive. Christianity is not « recognized » by Judaism. It has intrinsically no « religious significance ». This absence of « religious significance » is not limited to the « Jewish people ». Nor does Judaism recognize any religious « significance » for religions from « the rest of the world ».
It is useless to expect from Jacob Taubes scholarly comparisons and fine analyses comparing Jewish and Christian theological elements in order to try to deepen the terms of a common questioning.
A major element of the Christian faith is only « blasphemy » from the Jewish point of view:
« But, from the Jewish point of view, the division into « Father » and « Son » operates a cleavage of the divine being; the Synagogue looked at it, and still looks at it, simply as blasphemy. » iv
In theory, and in good faith, for the sake of the « controversy », Jacob Taubes could have evoked, on this question of the « Father » and the « Son », the troubling passages of the Zohar which deal with the generation of Elohim following the « union » of the One with Wisdom (Hokhmah)v.
Is the « Father-Son-Holy Spirit » Trinity structurally analogous to the Trinity of « the One, Hokhmah and Elohim »?
Does it offer points of comparison with the revelation made to Moses under a formal Trinitarian formula: « Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh » (Ex. 3:14) or with the strange Trinitarian expression of Deuteronomy: « YHVH, Elohenou, YHVH » (Deut. 6:4)?
Maybe so. Maybe not. But this is not the bottom line for Taubes: he is not at all interested in a thorough confrontation of texts and ideas on such opaque and metaphysical subjects.
This lack of interest in comparative hermeneutics is all the more striking because Taubes immediately admits that Judaism, in its long history, has in fact fallen back a great deal on its supposed « rigid monotheism »:
« The recent insistence on rigid monotheism as the defining characteristic of Jewish religious life is contradicted by a fact that contemporary Jewish thinkers tend to dismiss: the centuries-long predominance of the Lurian Kabbalah in Judaism. The Kabbalah has developed theological speculations that can only be compared to Gnostic (and pagan) mythologies. The mythical unity of the divine King and the divine Queen, the speculation on Adam Kadmon, the mythology of the ten sephirot, which are not attributes but manifestations of the divine, of different essences, poses a challenge to any historian of religion who claims to judge what is Jewish and what is not according to the criterion of a « rigid monotheism ». The Jewish religion would not have been able to cope with the explosion of Kabbalistic mythologization if its fundamental and determining characteristic had been a rigid monotheism. » vi
Even more astonishing, Jacob Taubes, after having denied any kind of « religious significance » to Christianity, affirms however that « Christianity is a typically Jewish heresy »:
« Christian history, Jesus’ claim to the title of Messiah and Pauline theology of Christ as the end of the Law are not at all « singular » events for Judaism, but are things that regularly recur in the fundamental Jewish frame (Grundmuster)of religious existence. As I have already said, Christian history does not constitute a « mystery » for the Jewish religion. Christianity represents a « typical » crisis in Jewish history, which expresses a typically Jewish « heresy »: antinomistic messianism – the belief that with the coming of the Messiah, what is decisive for salvation is not the observance of the Law, but faith in the Messiah. » vii
But if Christianity is, for Judaism, a « typically Jewish heresy », does this not recognize it as a form of « significance » in the eyes of Judaism, if only because of its antinomic opposition? The fact that forms of heresy, at least formally analogous to Christianity, may have appeared in a recurring manner within Judaism itself, does not this imply the presence of a subterranean question, always at work, in the darkness of the foundations?
Judaism seems indeed to suffer from certain structural « weaknesses », at least according to the opinion of Jacob Taubes :
« The weakness of all modern Jewish theology – and not only modern – is that it fails to designate Halakhah, the Law, as its alpha and omega. Since the period of Emancipation, the Jewish religion has been in crisis because it lost its center when Halakhah lost its central position and binding force in Jewish thought and life. From the moment Halakhah ceases to be the determining force in Jewish life, the door is open to all the anti-halakhic (antinomistic) and disguised Christian assumptions that are prevalent in secularized modern Christian society. » viii
On the one hand, Christianity has no « religious significance », according to Jacob Taubes.
On the other hand, Christianity threatens Halakhah in its very foundation, which is of the order of the Law, and in its « ultimate » principle, justice:
« Halakhah is essentially based on the principle of representation: the intention of man’s heart and soul must be manifested and represented in his daily life. Therefore the Halakhah must become « external » and « legal », it must deal with the details of life because it is only in the details of life that the covenant between God and man can be presented. (…) Halakhah is the Law because justice is the ultimate principle: ecstatic or pseudo-ecstatic religiosity can see in the sobriety of justice only dead legalism and external ceremonialism, just as anarchy can conceive law and order only as tyranny and oppression. » ix
Here we are at the core. For Taubes, Judaism has as its essential foundations Law and Justice, which are radically opposed to the « principle of love »:
« The controversy between the Jewish religion and the Christian religion refers to the eternal conflict between the principle of the Law and the principle of love. The « yoke of the Law » is challenged by the enthusiasm of love. But in the end, only the « justice of the Law » could question the arbitrariness of love. » x
Let’s summarize:
-Judaism does not give any religious significance to Christianity, nor does it recognize any meaning for the « rest of the world ».
-In reality Christianity is only a « Jewish heresy », as there have been so many others.
-Judaism is threatened by Christianity in that it deeply undermines Halakhah in a modern, secularized Christian society.
-The two essential principles of Judaism are the Law and justice.
-The essential principle of Christianity is love, but this principle is « arbitrary », -Judaism must question the « principle of love » through the « justice of the Law ».
Logically, the above points are inconsistent with each other when considered as a whole.
But logic has little to do with this debate, which is not, and probably cannot be « logical ».
Therefore, one has to use something other than logic.
But what? Vision? Intuition? Prophecy?
One reads, right at the very end of the Torah, its very last sentence:
« No prophet like Moses has ever risen in Israel, whom YHVH knew face to face. »xi
Let’s presume that the Torah tells the ultimate truth about this. How could it be otherwise?
Then, maybe, « He » could have risen out of Israel?
The Masters of Israel, from blessed memory, also testified, according to Moses de Leon:
« He has not risen in Israel, but He has risen among the nations of the world.» xii
The Masters cited the example of Balaam. He is a prophet, undeniably, since « God presented Himself (vayiqar) to Balaam » (Num. 23:4), but Balaam still is a « sulphurous » prophet.
However Balaam « stood up » before the end of the Torah. Which leaves open the question of other prophets « standing up » after the Torah was completed…
It is up to us, who belong to the nations of the world, to reflect and meditate on the prophets who may have risen – no longer in Israel, since none could possibly have « risen » in Israel since Moses – but among the « nations of the world ».
And this according to the testimony, not only of the Torah, but of the illustrious Jewish Masters who commented on it.
Vast program!
___________________
iJacob Taubes. « The controversy between Judaism and Christianity: Considerations on their indissoluble difference ». In « Time is running out. From worship to culture » (« Le temps presse ». Du culte à la culture. ) Ed. du Seuil. Paris, 2009.
iiJacob Taubes. « The controversy between Judaism and Christianity: Considerations on their indissoluble difference. « Time is running out. From worship to culture. Ed. du Seuil. Paris, 2009. p.101
iiiJacob Taubes. « The controversy between Judaism and Christianity: Considerations on their indissoluble difference ». In « Time is running out. From worship to culture » (« Le temps presse ». Du culte à la culture. ) Ed. du Seuil. Paris, 2009. p. 105
ivJacob Taubes. « The controversy between Judaism and Christianity: Considerations on their indissoluble difference ». In « Time is running out. From worship to culture » (« Le temps presse ». Du culte à la culture. ) Ed. du Seuil. Paris, 2009. . p. 104
viJacob Taubes. « The controversy between Judaism and Christianity: Considerations on their indissoluble difference ». In « Time is running out. From worship to culture » (« Le temps presse ». Du culte à la culture. ) Ed. du Seuil. Paris, 2009. . p. 111
viiJacob Taubes. »The controversy between Judaism and Christianity: Considerations on their indissoluble difference ». In « Time is running out. From worship to culture » (« Le temps presse ». Du culte à la culture. ) Ed. du Seuil. Paris, 2009. p. 113
viii« The controversy between Judaism and Christianity: Considerations on their indissoluble difference ». In « Time is running out. From worship to culture » (« Le temps presse ». Du culte à la culture. ) Ed. du Seuil. Paris, 2009. p. 114-115
ix« The controversy between Judaism and Christianity: Considerations on their indissoluble difference ». In « Time is running out. From worship to culture » (« Le temps presse ». Du culte à la culture. ) Ed. du Seuil. Paris, 2009. p. 115
xJacob Taubes. « The controversy between Judaism and Christianity: Considerations on their indissoluble difference ». In « Time is running out. From worship to culture » (« Le temps presse ». Du culte à la culture. ) Ed. du Seuil. Paris, 2009. Seuil. 2009. p. 117
The Book of Creation (« Sefer Yetsirah ») explains that the ten Sefirot Belimah (literally: the ten « numbers of non-being ») are « spheres of existence out of nothingness ». They have appeared as « an endless flash of light, » and « the Word of God circulates continuously within them, constantly coming and going, like a whirlwind. »i.
All of these details are valuable, but should not in fact be disclosed at all in public. The Book of Creation intimates this compelling order: « Ten Sefirot Belimah: Hold back your mouth from speaking about it and your heart from thinking about it, and if your heart is carried away, return to the place where it says, ‘And the Haioth go and return, for that is why the covenant was made’ (Ezekiel 6:14). »ii
I will not « hold my mouth » : I will quote the very texts of those who talk about it, think about it, go to it and come back to it over and over again.
For example, Henry Corbin, in a text written as an introduction to the Book of Metaphysical Penetrations by Mollâ Sadrâ Shîrâzi, the most famous Iranian philosopher at the time of the brilliant Safavid court of Isfahan, and a contemporary of Descartes and Leibniz in Europe, wonders in his turn about the essence of sefirot, and raises the question of their ineffability.
« The quiddity or divine essence, what God or the One is in his being, is found outside the structure of the ten sefirot, which, although they derive from it, do not carry it within them at all. The ten sefirot are ‘without His quiddity’ (beli mahuto, בלי מהותו), such is the teaching of the sentence in the Book of Creation. (…) But a completely different exegesis of the same sentence from the Book ofCreation is advanced in the Sicle of the Sanctuary. For this new exegesis, the word belimah does not mean beli mahout (without essence) but refers to the inexpressible character of the sefirot whose mouth must ‘refrain itself (belom) from speaking' ». iii
So, the question is : are sefirot « without divine essence », as the Book of Creation seems to say?
Or are sefirot really divine, and therefore « unspeakable »?
Or are they only « that which cannot be spoken of », according to the restrictive opinion of Moses de Leon (1240-1305), who is the author of the Sicle of the Sanctuary?
It seems to me that Moses de Leo, also apocryphal author of the famous Zohar, occupies a position on this subject that is difficult to defend, given all the speculations and revelations that abound in his main work…
Moreover, if one « cannot speak » of the sefirot, nor « think » about them, how can one then attribute any value whatsoever to the venerable Sefer Yetsirah (whose origin is attributed to Abraham himself, – but whose writing is dated historically between the 3rd and 6th century A.D.)?
On the other hand, – an argument of authority it is true, but not without relevance -, it should be emphasized that the Sicle of the Sanctuary is nevertheless « a little young » compared to the Sefer Yestsirah, which is at least a millennium older.
In view of these objections, let us consider that we can continue to evoke here (albeit cautiously) the sefirot, and try to reflect on them.
The sefirot, what are they? Are they of divine essence or are they pure nothingness?
The Zohar clearly states :
« Ten Sefirot Belimah: It is the breath (Ruah) of the spirit of the Living God for eternity. The Word or creative power, the Spirit and the Word are what we call the Holy Spirit. » iv
Finding expressions such as the « Word » or the « Holy Spirit » in one of the oldest philosophical texts of Judaism (elaborated between the 3rd and 6th centuries A.D.), may evoke strangely similar wordings, used in Christian Gospels.
There is, at least, a possibility of beginning a fruitful debate on the nature of the divine « emanations », to use the concept of atsilut – אצילות, used by Moses de Leon, and on the possible analogy of these « emanations » with the divine « processions » of the Father, Son and Spirit, as described by Christian theology?
What I would like to discuss here is how the Zohar links the « triple names » of God with what Moses de Leon calls the divine « emanations ».
The Zohar repeatedlyquotes several combinations of God’s « names », which form « triplets ».
In addition, it also deals with the divine « emanations » of which the sefirot seems an archetype, as well as expressions such as the « Breath » of God or his « Seed ».
Do the « divine emanations » and the « triple names » of God have some deep, structural, hidden relationship, and if so, what does this teach us?
The « triple names » of God.
In Scripture, there are several instances of what might be called the « triple names » of God, that is, formulas consisting of three words that form a unitary whole, an indissoluble verbal covenant to designate God:
-Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh (Ex. 3:14) (« I am he who is »)
To these « trinitarian » formulas, the Zohar adds for example:
–Berechit Bara Elohim (Gen 1:1) (« In the beginning created Elohim »)
Bringing these different « triplets » together, the Zohar establishes the idea that the names contained in each of these « triplets » are individually insufficient to account for the divine essence. Only the union of the three names in each of these formulations is supposed to be able to approach the mystery. But, taken individually, one by one, the names « YHVH », or « Ehyeh », or « Elohim », do not reach the ultimate level of comprehension. It is as if only the dynamic « procession » of the relationships between the names « within » each triplet could account for the mystery of God’s « Name ».
On the other hand, the Zohar suggests a kind of structural identity between the « triple names » just mentioned. Thus, by comparing term by term the verses Ex. 3:14 and Dt. 6:4, one can assume a kind of identity between YHVH and « Ehyeh ». And, based on the supposed analogy between Dt 6:4 and Gen 1:1, we can also identify the name « YHVH » with the names « Berechit » and « Elohim ».
Finally, if we pursue this structuralist logic, a word that could a priori be a « simple conjunction » with a grammatical vocation (the word « asher« ) acquires (according to the Zohar) the status of « divine noun », or divine hypostasis, as does the verb « bara« .
Let’s look at these points.
The Zohar formulates these structural analogies as follows:
« This is the meaning of the verse (Dt. 6:4): ‘Listen, Israel, YHVH, Elohenu, YHVH is one’. These three divine names designate the three scales of the divine essence expressed in the first verse of Genesis: ‘Berechit bara Elohim eth-ha-shamaim’, ‘Berechit’ designates the first mysterious hypostasis; ‘bara’ indicates the mystery of creation; ‘Elohim’ designates the mysterious hypostasis which is the basis of all creation; ‘eth-ha-shamaim’ designates the generating essence. The hypostasis ‘Elohim’ forms the link between the two others, the fecundating and the generating, which are never separated and form one whole. » v
We see that the Zohar thus distinguishes, from the first verse of the Torah, two « triplets » of divine names, somehow embedded in each other: ‘Berechit bara Elohim’ on the one hand, and ‘Bara Elohim eth-ha-shamaym’ on the other.
We also deduce that the second « triplet » is somehow « engendered » (in the sense of « generative grammars ») by the first « triplet », thanks to the special role played by the name ‘Elohim’.
The generative theory of the divine « triplets » also allows us to better understand the profound structure of the famous verse ‘Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh’ (Ex. 3:14) (« I am he who is »), and moreover allows us to establish a link with the theory of the divine emanations of the Zohar.
Let’s look at this point.
The Seed of God: ‘Asher’ and ‘Elohim’.
The « Seed » of God is evoked metaphorically or directly in several texts of Scripture as well as in the Zohar. It has various names: Isaiah calls it ‘Zera’ (זֶרָע: ‘seed’, ‘seed’, ‘race’)vi. The Zohar calls it « Zohar » (זֹהַר: glow, brightness, light), but also « Asher » (אֲשֶׁר: « that » or « who » – that is, as we have seen, the grammatical particle that can be used as a relative pronoun, conjunction or adverb), as the following two passages indicate:
« The word ‘glow’ (Zohar) refers to the spark that the Mysterious One caused when he struck the void and which is the origin of the universe, which isa palace built for the glory of the Mysterious One. This spark constitutes in a waythe sacred seed of the world. This mystery is expressed in the words of Scripture(Is. 6:13): ‘And the seed to which it owes its existence is sacred.’ Thus the word ‘glow’ (Zohar) refers to the seed He sowed for His glory, since the purpose of creation is the glorification of God. Like a mollusk from which purple is extracted andclothed in its shell, the divine seed is surrounded by the material that serves as its palace, built for the glory of God and the good of the world. This palace from which the divine seed has surrounded itself is called « Elohim » (Lord). This is the mysticalmeaning of the words: ‘With the Beginning He created Elohim’, that is, with the help of the ‘light’ (Zohar), the origin of all the Verbs (Maamaroth), God created ‘Elohim’ (Lord) ». vii
But a few lines later, the Zohar assigns to the word « Zohar » two more meanings, that of « Mysterious » and that of « Beginning ». Therefore, since the word « Zohar » is no longer available as a metaphor for the divine « Seed », the Zohar uses the word « Asher » (אֲשֶׁר: « that » or « who ») to designate the latter, but also the word « Elohim », which derives from it by synonymous engendering and following a kind of « literal » pirouette, as shown in this passage:
« By the word ‘glow’ (Zohar), Scripture refers to the Mysterious called ‘Berechit’ (Beginning), because it is the beginning of all things. When Moses asked God what His name was, God replied (Ex. 3:14): « Ehyeh asher Ehyeh » (אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה , I am He who is). The sacred name ‘Ehyeh’ appears on both sides, while the name ‘Elohim’ forms the crown, since it appears in the middle; for ‘Asher’ is synonymous with ‘Elohim’, whereas the name ‘Asher’ is formed from the sameletters that make up the word ‘Roch’ (head, crown). ‘Asher’, which is the same as ‘Elohim’, is derived from ‘Berechit’. As long as the divine spark was enclosed in the sublime palace, that is to say, before it manifested itself,it did not form any peculiarity that could be designated in the divine essenceby anyname; the Whole was One, under the name ‘Roch’. Butwhen God created, with the help of the sacred seed (‘Asher’), the palace of matter, ‘Asher’ took shape in the divine essence; only then did ‘Asher’ take, in the divine essence, the shape of a crown head (‘Roch’), being situated in the middle (‘Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh’). Now, the word ‘Berechit’ contains the word ‘Roch’, synonymous with ‘Asher’;it forms the words ‘Roch’ and ‘Baït’, i.e. ‘Roch’ enclosed in a palace (‘Baït’). viiiThe words: ‘Berechit Bara Elohim’ thus mean : When ‘Roch’, synonymous with ‘Asher’,wasused as divine seed in the palace of matter, ‘Elohim’ was created; that is to say, Elohim took shape in the essence of God. ix
Let’s summarize what we just learned from the Zohar.
The divine « Seed » receives, according to its authors, the following names: Zera‘, Zohar, Asher, Roch (‘seed, glow, who, head’).
The « Seed » is deposited in the middle of the « palace ».
The Palace-Semen together are called ‘Beginning’ (Berechit).
And this ‘Beginning’ ‘created’ ‘Elohim’.
And all this is presented in the first verse of the Torah.
How can we fail to see in this thesis of the Zohar a structural analogy between « Elohim » and the Christian concept of « Son of God »?
Decidedly, even a purely ‘monotheistic’ theology needs « emanations » to live in the « world ».
Metaxu. Le blog de Philippe Quéau 
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